


Ghosts of Peladon

by Rokesmith



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Peladon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 03:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3675171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rokesmith/pseuds/Rokesmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mysterious invitation brings the Doctor and Amy to the planet Peladon, hundreds of years since his last visit. But all is not well in the royal castle; people are starting see ghosts... even the Doctor. Contains dark themes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Fellow of Infinite Jest

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Doctor Who and its characters etc are property of the BBC. This fanfic was written for fun not profit. 
> 
> Author’s Note: This story is set just after Vincent and the Doctor, and as a result contains spoilers for Season 5 up to that point. It’s set on the planet Peladon, which featured in two Third Doctor stories, but it’s not necessary to have seen either of them to understand the plot of this one. Finally, this story is rated because it contains some quite dark themes. I’ve done my best not to depict them any more graphically than they have been done in the show itself. However, some readers may still find it upsetting.

The TARDIS phone was ringing.

Amy Pond paced back and forth in front of the console, wondering if she should answer it. It might be Winston Churchill again, or perhaps President Kennedy, or maybe even the mysterious River Song.

“Doctor!” she called for the second time. “The phone!”

Her voice echoed over the sound of the idling engines, but the Doctor still didn’t answer. Amy gave the phone one more ring and then snatched it up.

“Hello?”

“Is this the Doctor?”

The voice was definitely female, that was all Amy could tell. She didn’t recognise it but it was clipped, precise and confident.

“No,” she answered, “but you’ve got the right number. Who’s speaking?”

There was a pause. “May I speak to the Doctor?”

“I’m sorry,” Amy said, “the Doctor’s very busy at the moment but I’ll make sure he gets your message.”

Another pause, lasting long enough to make Amy wonder if the connection hadn’t broken, then, “The Doctor is formally invited to take his place at the celebration of the ten year jubilee of Harulan the Fourth, King of Peladon, as befits the High Physician of the Royal Household.”

“King?” Amy repeated. “Jubilee?”

“Yes.”

Amy did her best to keep the excitement out of her voice. “Well... I think the Doctor will be happy to except your... generous invitation. You can tell the king that.”

“I shall. Will he be coming alone?”

“Absolutely not. You can tell the king that the Doctor will be coming with his lovely companion... Lady... Amelia of... Inverness.”

“Thank you.”

The phone buzzed and was silent. Amy looked at it for a moment and then shrugged and replaced it. She tapped her foot impatiently against the glass floor and wondered whether she should go and look for the Doctor or just wait for him to come back. What put her off searching was the thought that he could be anywhere and she could swear that sometimes the TARDIS actually tried to stop her from finding him.

Unfortunately Amy had never been particularly good at waiting for the Doctor and after ten minutes she was contemplating typing ‘Peladon’ into the typewriter just to see what would happen. Before she had a chance, though, the Doctor was bouncing down the stairs, grinning and towelling off his damp hair.

“Ah, there you are Amy. I was suddenly overcome by a desire for a dip in the pool.”

“You remembered to change first this time?”

“Of course, Amy. You know me, I never make the same mistake twice.”

“You do.”

The Doctor’s smile flickered for just a second. “Yes, well, now I’ve had my swim, where would you like to go next? If you’re in the mood for a dip too, then I could take you to Space Florida. They have sand there that’s so fine and so smooth you can actually swim in it! Imagine that, Amy, you can hardly tell where the beach stops and the sea starts!”

“Actually, Doctor,” Amy said, managing to make him hesitate enough for her to go on, “I think I might have found us somewhere to go.”

“Oh, where’s that then?” The Doctor cast a suspicious glance over the console, as if he was worried she’d been pressing buttons.

“Well, while you were in the pool, this woman rang and said we were invited to a royal celebration at a place called Peladon.”

“Peladon,” the Doctor repeated. “Peladon? Peladon! I haven’t thought about Peladon in ages. And I haven’t been there since... well, it was a very long time ago.”

Amy grinned. “So we’re going, yeah?”

“Of course! Space Florida isn’t going anywhere and I love a good party.”

He was already moving, long fingers dancing over the keyboards, tweaking the taps, prodding the buttons, his whole body in motion as he sent the TARDIS on course. The time rotor shuddered and the entire ship trembled as somewhere far away – or perhaps all around them – the engines roared into life.

“Right,” he announced after a few moments. “Peladon here we come.” He pivoted on his heel to face her again. “Come along, Pond. You and I need to get changed.”

***

“How do I look, Pond?”

Amy wasn’t sure how to answer the question. She was at least glad to know the Doctor wasn’t planning to attend a celebration on another planet dressed like a mad librarian in his grandfather’s clothes, but she couldn’t call this an improvement.

The Doctor was wearing a white silk shirt with a high Victorian collar, dark trousers and shiny leather shoes. Over the top he’d put on a waist-length burgundy frock coat and she was sad – but not surprised – to see the enormous dark blue floppy bow tie around his neck, held in place by a silver pin bearing some kind of figure-eight crest. It just looked, to Amy, like a more formal and even more old-fashioned version of his normal clothes.

“Well?” he asked expectantly.

“You look... nice,” she said finally.

“Nice?” The Doctor twirled in front of the mirror. “Nice? Is that all? Well, I suppose it could be worse. You look nice too.”

Amy’s dress wasn’t as frilly as she had expected when she’d found it. It was narrow, lilac in colour and with a high neck-line. She felt a little awkward in it, but she wasn’t going to let it show. She’d also pinned her hair up and found a string of what she assumed were diamonds to go around her neck and earrings to match. Looking in the mirror, she knew that any man in the universe – except of course the Doctor – would say she looked a lot more than ‘nice’.

The Doctor finished transferring the contents of his old coat into the pockets of his new one. Amy half expected him to offer her his arm, but he didn’t, he just strode towards the wardrobe door. Amy put on the heavy white fur coat she’d picked out and followed him; keeping up in a formal dress and heels was even harder than normal. Fortunately, somewhere between the wardrobe and the console room, the Doctor seemed to realise this and slowed down enough for them to walk side by side.

“Welcome to Peladon!” the Doctor exclaimed, throwing open the TARDIS doors.

The first thing Amy felt was the wind whip her hair, and she was glad she’d pinned it up. The TARDIS had landed next to a rocky outcrop on the edge of a wide track in between further jagged rocks. And at the end of the road, on the pinnacle of this barren mountain, was a castle. It could have been carved out of the same grey stone, looming huge and solid over the mountain and the landscape beneath it. Above its towers, the sky boiled with dark clouds that stretched all the way to the horizon. Caught in the moment of setting, the dull red sun hung between the grey clouds and black land, and then it was gone.

“Hasn’t changed a bit,” the Doctor said happily.

“Doctor, if I’d know you were going to take me mountaineering, I’d have worn other shoes.”

“You’ll be fine. Come along.”

As they picked their way over the rocks towards the points of light that marked the end of the road, the Doctor cheerfully babbled about his previous visits to the planet. Amy was far too preoccupied trying to keep her footing to really pay attention. She caught occasional references to kings, queens, miners and monsters, but couldn’t tell how they related to each other, or if they did at all.

At the entrance to the castle, they were met by a pair of guards in emerald green livery and tricorn hats. The pikes they held might have been ceremonial, but they still looked sharp.

“Hello!” The Doctor called. “We’re here for the jubilee. I hope I’ve got the right place. I’m the Doctor and this is...”

Amy cut him off. “Lady Amelia of Inverness.”

“Lady Amelia?” The Doctor repeated. “Of Inverness?”

“Doctor, I am not going to a royal party as Amy Pond from Leadworth.”

“But... Inverness?”

“Why do you think I talk like this?”

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a third man, apparently summoned by one of the other two. He was small, bald and blinked up at the pair from behind a pair of heavy glasses.

“Doctor? Lady Amelia?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Phineas, the Royal Chamberlain. Please follow me. I’m afraid we weren’t sure when to expect you. It’s an honour to have you here.”

The Doctor smiled. “Well, we’re honoured to be here, aren’t we Amy? We’d be even more honoured if you could tell us what’s happening tonight. We didn’t get the full program.”

“Of course,” Phineas nodded. “The other guests have already arrived. His majesty is hosting a ball tonight and the celebration of his jubilee is tomorrow evening with a dress rehearsal in the afternoon.”

“Three parties in one day?” The Doctor exclaimed. “I never knew you lot knew how to have such a good time.”

“You’re welcome, Doctor,” Amy said.

***

“The Doctor and Lady Amelia of Inverness!”

As the echoes of their booming announcement faded, the Doctor skipped down the steps into the banqueting hall. By the time he had reached the bottom, he already knew the exact layout of the room. The walls were hung with red, purple and green banners, bearing the crests of the Peladon royal houses. The chandelier hanging from the ceiling was carved out of an intricately complicated pattern of crystal that made the light dance over the pristine white tablecloths and golden cutlery that adorned the three long tables.

The people milling around the tables were divided up into three groups. There were the Peladonian aristocracy and minor members of the royal family in complicated and colourful robes and dresses, the representatives of the Mining Parliament in much simpler formal suits, and the delegates from the local human planets in their unique cultural costumes. A few of them looked up as he reached the bottom of the stairs, but the announcement of the entrance had mostly been lost in the sound of conversation.

Amy finally reached the bottom of the stairs behind him. “So who are all these people then?”

The Doctor pivoted back and forth, wondering which group to start with. “Well...” he began, but got no further.

The crowd in front of them parted and a figure loomed out of it. It was a mass of solid reptilian scales and armour towering over the Doctor and looking down at him dull red eyes.

“Doctor,” it hissed. “Kashak. Of Mars.”

“Hello!” The Doctor said. “Amy, this is Kashak. She’s an Ice Warrior, but don’t let the name put you off.”

“Hi,” Amy said.

“Is it you, Doctor?” A shrill voice came from behind the Ice Warrior.

Kashak stepped to her left. Behind her was a single large eye on top of an insect-like body with six arms, some of which were hidden in the folds of a long green cloak. Amy flinched and took half a step back.

“Alpha Centauri!” The Doctor was beaming now. “My dear fellow! Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Amy don’t be shy, he’s not an Atraxi. This is Alpha Centauri. Well... he’s an Alpha Centauri. Their names are unpronounceable to most species and so few of them leave their home planet – they don’t like to travel, you see – that everyone just calls them by their species to save time.”

“This is true, Doctor,” the monocular alien replied. “It causes us no offense. We were invited to represent the Federation at the Jubilee. Are you the same Doctor who aided one of my predecessors on Peladon?”

“That’s me.”

“Then we are honoured to meet you, Doctor,” Kashak said. “And your companion.”

Phineas reappeared at their side. “Doctor, Lady Amelia, ambassadors. The king is about to make his entrance. His Majesty has been very excited ever since he heard you were coming and has set a place for you and Lady Amelia at his side. Please, follow me.”

“Certainly,” Amy said, but as soon as his back was turned, she spun towards the Doctor, beaming with delight. “Oh my god, this is amazing. First Liz Ten, now this. I bet you know loads of other royals too.”

“I do,” the Doctor replied. “But not all of them would be pleased to see me.”

They were led through the milling crowd to the centre table. Everyone else was taking their seats too. A pair of footmen pulled out their chairs for them, but they barely had time to sit down before a gong rang through the hall and everyone stood up again.

The hall went silent and everyone turned towards the stairs as the major-domo announced, “His Majesty, Harulan the Fourth, King of Peladon.”

The king led the procession down the steps. The first thing the Doctor noticed about the man in the formal uniform jacket and sash was his age. Harulan was in his mid twenties, hardly older than Amy, with a round, cheerful face and dusty blond hair just visible beneath his silver crown. He walked slowly down the stairs, took his place in the elaborate chair to the Doctor’s left, waited for his entourage to find their own seats, and then signalled everyone to sit down.

Conversations slowly started up again, before the king turned to his guests of honour and asked uncertainly, “Doctor?”

“Yes. Hello, Your Majesty. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“You are not the man I was expecting,” the king said.

“Sorry. I’ve... changed a bit since then.”

“Doctor,” Amy hissed.

“Yes, right. Your Majesty, this is my friend, Lady Amelia.”

Amy leaned forward over the table, unsure if she was supposed to bow or curtsey while still sitting down, so she settled for holding out her hand. “Hi, Your Majesty.”

“I’m delighted to meet you, Lady Amelia.”

The Doctor slumped slightly in his chair. “Every time,” he muttered.

A plate bearing a pair of small roast birds with garnish was served first. The Doctor cheerfully attacked it with a mismatched knife and fork while Amy delicately cut hers up with the dainty cutlery she was supposed to use, making sure none of the sauce that came with it got on her dress.

“So how’s Peladon these days?” the Doctor asked when he was finished. “I haven’t stopped by for a while.”

“The royal records say four hundred years,” the king replied.

“That’s definitely a while.”

“He does that,” Amy put in.

“Things have changed on Peladon since those days,” the king said.

Amy leaned forward. “How? I don’t know much about this planet.”

“Yes you do,” the Doctor protested. “I told you all about it on the way here.”

“But you haven’t been here in four hundred years. Can you tell me, Your Majesty?”

“I can refuse nothing to a companion of the Doctor, Lady Amelia. Where should I begin?”

Amy pointed to the opposite table where the group of men and women in plain suits were talking intently. “Who are they?”

“They are the Upper House of the Parliament. The man in the middle is the Premier.”

“The Parliament?”

The king smiled. “Surely you know, Lady Amelia, that Peladon’s main industry is mining and that the Parliament is the miners’ elected government?”

Amy looked over at the Doctor, whose mouth was currently full of the vegetable main course. “Sometimes he forgets to mention things... Your Majesty.”

“No, I do not,” the Doctor mumbled.

“Did he tell you why he decided to return to Peladon after all this time?”

The Doctor stopped, a fork half way to his mouth. “We were invited.”

“Invited? By whom?”

The Doctor turned to Amy, who shrugged desperately. “I don’t know. Someone just rang the TARDIS phone and said this was happening and asked if we’d like to come. She didn’t say who she was.”

“You knew we were coming,” the Doctor turned back to the king. “How did you know?”

“I’m not sure.” It was the king’s turn to shrug. “My chamberlain came to me a week ago and said they had received a message from the Doctor saying he was coming to my jubilee celebration. I’ll ask him about it as soon as he can.”

“You do that,” the Doctor murmured, then he smiled. “But there’s no point spoiling our dinner worrying. What’s for dessert?”

Dessert was a multicoloured fruit salad arranged in a pyramid that arrived a few minutes later. The Doctor smiled at it and slowly turned the plate around, examining it from every angle.

“I should come to Peladon more often. Even the food is built well.”

The king looked past him at Amy, who was smiling with a weary resignation. “You seem used to this, Lady Amelia. Have you known the Doctor a long time?”

Amy smiled. “Ever since I was a little girl.”

“Well that was a lovely dinner,” the Doctor said. “Wasn’t it a lovely dinner, Amy? We really must find whoever organised our invitation so we can say thank you. So what’s next for the evening? We didn’t get a programme, you see.”

“After dinner...” the king said slowly. “Is traditionally... dancing.”

“Dancing?” Amy exclaimed.

“Yes,” the king nodded. “And... it would be an honour to dance with the Doctor’s companion.”

Amy hesitated. “But... I don’t know the steps.”

“I think I can teach you.”

She looked over at the Doctor. “Can I?”

The Doctor smiled. “Go ahead, Pond.”

The king rose. Everyone else did as well. The major-domo announced that the drinks and dancing would take place in the ballroom. Under the eyes of everyone in the room, the king held his hand out to Amy. She glanced back at the Doctor and then took it.

“Your Majesty...” she whispered, “There isn’t a queen of Peladon, is there?”

The king smiled. “Of course there is, Lady Amelia.”

Amy froze. “Oh.”

He pointed to an elegant woman in a dark dress standing near the Premier. “My mother, Queen Rossum.”

“Oh.”

Amy looked over her shoulder at the Doctor, beaming broadly, and then turned her attention back to King Harulan as he led her towards the ballroom. The Doctor watched them go. In the noise of the crowd, no one heard him sigh, and no one saw his smile fade. He followed them into the ballroom trying very hard not to think about a boy who had never existed called Rory Williams.


	2. More Things in Heaven and Earth

“Wow. I mean... wow. That was... amazing.”

Amy was practically still dancing as she followed one of the castle staff along the corridor towards their rooms. The Doctor followed her, looking at the floor, careful to smile whenever she glanced back at him. 

“Did you see me, Doctor? I bet half the people there were looking at me and trying to figure out who I was and why he was dancing with me.” 

“Yes, I saw you,” the Doctor said. “I saw you drink all that wine too.” 

“Four glasses!” Amy responded. “Takes more than that to get me squiffy.”

“Earth wine, maybe.”

Amy sighed. “Anyway, why weren’t you dancing? Everyone else was. There were lots of women there, and you might even have got a dance with me if you were lucky.”

“I only dance on special occasions.” 

“Special? We’re at a royal jubilee on another planet. What could be more special than that?”

“Your rooms,” the steward said, stopping in front of a pair of heavy doors. 

“Thank you.” The Doctor patted him on the shoulder. “Thank you very much. Get a good night’s sleep, Amy. We’ll have a busy day tomorrow.” 

“Yes, Doctor,” Amy replied, and vanished into her room. 

The Doctor stayed in the corridor long enough to hear one more exclamation of delight before he opened his own door. The room was dark, but a few seconds of awkward fumbling and he found the knob beside the door and twisted it. Then he twisted it in the other direction and the gas lights around the room hissed into life. 

Castle Peladon’s guest rooms had obviously been designed to match the old-fashioned exterior of the building. The floors were covered in thick carpets of imitation animal fur, there was a wardrobe in the corner about the size of the TARDIS’s exterior shell and the huge bed’s wooden frame had been designed to be as much like the tree it had come from as possible, complete with carved leaves and berries entwined around the bedposts. There was also a second door which led to a much more modern bathroom and an arched window that looked out into the dark over battlements which had been old the first time the Doctor had visited the planet. 

The Doctor stared out of the window for a moment and then signed and hung up his coat, carefully undid his bow tie and detached this shirt’s collar. He turned down the lamps until the room was bathed in a faint orange gloom that reminded him of winter evenings long ago, and fell back on the bed. His eyes traced the images of trisilicate mining depicted on the roof of the bed and he wondered if he should sleep. 

And for the hundred millionth time since the cave and the crack, he asked himself if he was doing the right thing. And for the hundred millionth time, he didn’t know the answer. 

The mattress was a lot more comfortable than it looked, and he started to doze. Outside, the wind battered against the window and the castle walls as it had done for hundreds of years. From the inside, all the Doctor heard was a faint moan. But as his mind drifted, his senses picked the sound apart the sound, separating frequencies and untangling the noise until it was not one moan but two. And the second was not the dull groan of the wind in the night; it was sharper, angrier, and alive. 

The Doctor’s eyes snapped open. “Aggedor.” 

He sprang off the bed, stumbling in the half dark towards his coat and his screwdriver, but before he could reach it there was thumping on the door. 

“Doctor! Doctor, wake up!”

He forgot about the screwdriver, pivoted and pulled the door open. Amy was standing in the corridor, her palm raised to hammer on the door again, wearing a long white nightdress that was almost identical to the one she’d been wearing when she had run away with him. Her eyes were wide and her face was set in the look of determined anger she hid behind when she was scared. 

“What is it?”

“There’s... there was a man in my room.” 

“A man?” the Doctor repeated. 

“I woke up there was a man standing at the window. But when I turned the light on... he wasn’t.” 

“Show me.”

Amy’s room was decorated in much the same style as the Doctor’s, only with different patterns on the bed posts. The Doctor stood beside the window while Amy paced back and forth in front of the bed. 

“He was there, Doctor, he really was. I’m not making it up and I wasn’t still dreaming. One minute he was there, but by the time I’d turned the lights on, he’d disappeared. I didn’t see any flashing lights or hear any funny noises but he really was here.” 

The Doctor reached out and grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to a stop. “Amy, I believe you. What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. It was dark and he was only there for a second. Tall. Thin. I turned the lights on so I could get a better look.” 

He flashed the screwdriver over the room, waving it for several seconds over the spot where Amy had pointed, then shrugged apologetically. “Nothing. But that still leaves a lot of possibilities.”

“Okay,” Amy whispered. 

He shoved the screwdriver back into his pocket and then exclaimed, “Dreaming!”

“What?”

“You said ‘still dreaming’. You were dreaming. What were you dreaming about?”

“I don’t know, it was a dream! Does it matter?”

“Yes, definitely. Perhaps.” 

Amy sat down on the bed. “I don’t remember, really. I think it was about Rio.” 

“We’ve never been to Rio.”

“I know that,” Amy snapped. “But... I was dancing at the carnival in Rio. Yeah, that was it. I must have dancing on the brain or something.” 

“Ah well, doesn’t matter anyway,” the Doctor said. “You can dance some more for real tomorrow. Get some rest.”

“What about you?” 

The Doctor just smiled. “Sweet dreams, Pond.” 

***

With his collar reattached and his tie firmly in place, the Doctor wandered the corridors of Castle Peladon. It was late, but not so late there was not still some life left in the castle. The guests had all gone to bed, but in places the staff were still clearing up after the party and preparing for the continued celebrations the next day. 

This activity didn’t seem to have reached the guest wing. The corridors the Doctor followed were stone flagged, so his footsteps echoed faintly down them. Only every third lamp was lit, and those were turned down very low, leaving patches of shadow in between them. The Doctor listened for any other footsteps and watched for any other shadows, but he heard and saw nothing. 

Then, coming around a corner, he did hear something. Not footsteps, voices. He stopped and peered around. Two men were standing at the end of the corridor beside the window. One of them was tall, with a lean, angular face while the other was slightly shorter and more broadly built. Scanning his memory, the Doctor realised he had seen them both amongst the crowds during the dinner, but that was the only information he had on them. 

They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying to each other, and after a few more moments they stopped. They both looked around, scanning the darkness as the Doctor froze on the spot, and then slipped away in opposite directions. 

The Doctor reached the junction five seconds later, twirled on the spot, and then set off after the taller man. 

The man didn’t look behind him, but the Doctor stayed a safe distance behind him, long slow strides through the shadows and quick skips through the patches of light. He turned left, right and then right again. The man sped up, turned a quick corner and by the time the Doctor reached the junction, he was gone. The corridor was lined with doors. So was the one next to it. 

“Ah...”

He went forward, looking right to left at each junction. All he found were more empty corridors. 

Then he stopped. He stood very still in the darkness. He closed his eyes, held his breath and willed his twin heartbeats to quieten. On the very edge of hearing, that same sound whispered in the darkness. 

He sprang to his left, leant against the wall and pressed his ear tightly to it. Something was echoing through the stonework. It felt like it was all around him. 

He pulled the screwdriver from his pocket and shone it over the wall. But before he could flick it open to see the readout, he heard footsteps behind him. He pivoted, sprang around the corner and was greeted by a shriek as the dark haired girl who’d been coming the other way jumped backwards. 

“Oh! Sorry! Sorry!” 

The girl took a few steps back until she could see the Doctor clearly, then she curtseyed. She looked a few years younger than Amy and was wearing a simple pale blue dress and had her hair organised in a long dark plat. 

“Good evening, sir,” she said.

“I’m not sure it still counts as evening,” the Doctor replied. “Might be morning by now. Who are you then?” 

“My name is Livia. I’m chambermaid to the queen.” 

“And what are you doing out so late? Girl your age should be in bed by now.”

“Her Majesty needs to make sure she’s ready for tomorrow. She’ll be wearing three different dresses and they have to be perfect.” 

The Doctor grinned. “And I thought Amy had trouble choosing her outfits.” 

The girl gave him an awkward smile. “Sir... are you... the Doctor?” 

“Yes, I am, and I was wondering if you could help me. You haven’t seen or heard anything odd, unusual or maybe even strange tonight have you?” 

“Well, sir, as I was coming down the corridor I thought I heard a sort of buzzing sound.”

“Ah.” The Doctor flashed the screwdriver over the wall again. “It didn’t sound anything like that did it? Well, never mind. And I’m not sir, I’m just the Doctor. Oh, you might have passed a tall man with dark hair in a bit of a hurry. Who was he?”

Livia thought for a moment. “I thought I saw the Apothecary earlier.” 

“The Apothecary? Why was he out so late?” 

“I... don’t know, sir. Doctor.” 

The Doctor leaned down. Livia took a step back.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he whispered. “What have you seen?”

“I haven’t seen it,” Livia said. “But... I know staff who have. We don’t talk about it.” 

“It? What’s ‘it’?”

“The ghost,” Livia breathed. 

“Livia, there you are!” 

Livia gasped and dropped into a deep curtsey. The Doctor pivoted and found himself facing Queen Rossum as she strode down the corridor towards them. In the long nightdress and with her hair down, she looked almost like a different person to the regal queen he’d seen earlier. 

“Hello!” the Doctor exclaimed. “You lot must be the most nocturnal royals I’ve met since Venice. Except they weren’t really royals. Or even really nocturnal. Even if they were vampires. Except that they weren’t.” 

The queen waited patiently for him to run out of steam and then turned to her maid. “I’m sure the Doctor appreciates your help. I’ll make sure he finds his way back to his room. Wait for me in my chambers.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Livia curtseyed again and hurried away. 

The queen took a few steps along the corridor, then turned back. “I believe your room is this way, Doctor.” 

The Doctor smiled, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and followed. 

“What brings you so far from your bed tonight, Doctor?” 

“I thought I heard something. I wanted to know what it was.” 

The queen smiled. “The howls of Aggedor, perhaps?”

The Doctor gave her a sharp look. “Good guess.” 

“Doctor, I have lived in this castle for thirty years. I know the stories as well as anyone. But this castle has been restored and rebuilt over and over again. The ancient passageways were sealed and then dismantled entirely. No monsters prowl these halls.” 

“What about ghosts?” 

“Ghosts, Doctor? All castles attract ghost stories.” 

The Doctor nodded. “Yes, they do. But old ghosts are laughed at. They aren’t talked about in whispers.” 

“Everyone has ghosts, Doctor. And everyone hears sounds in the night. But they are not the howls of Aggedor.” 

“What did I hear then?”

She smiled again, and the lamp light flickered across her face. “Doctor, Peladon is cold, and old castles are cold. But we are not cold tonight.” 

The Doctor stopped, turned on his heel and sprang towards the wall. Beyond the echoes of his own blood in his ears he listened to a regular, rhythmic gurgling. The stone was warm to the touch.

“Central heating?” 

“My husband’s mother’s innovation. Castle Peladon is full of surprises.” 

The Doctor smiled and started walking again. “Suppose I want to be surprised?” 

“You are the Doctor.”

He frowned. “Yes. People keep saying that. What does it mean?”

The queen hesitated. “The Doctor is one of the most important members of the Royal Household, appointed High Physician in absentia by Thalira, daughter of Peladon and guaranteed a seat at the royal table until there are no more kings or queens.”

“In absentia?”

“The Doctor is known as many things on many worlds.” The queen smiled again. “Nowhere is he punctual.” 

“Well, I have been known to be late. Just ask Amy. Or don’t.” 

The queen indicated the corridor. “Your room, Doctor. I have to prepare for tomorrow. Goodnight.” 

“Yes. Goodnight, Your Majesty.” 

He attempted a bow, the kind suitable for a dance in 17th Century Vienna. The queen smiled and nodded in return. Then she turned and walked slowly away. The Doctor waited until her rustling footsteps had faded away and then turned towards his room. 

On his way past, he paused outside Amy’s door, but there was no light from inside and no sound either. He nodded, smiled, and walked towards his room. 

Then he stopped.

Facing him was a patch of shadow between the hall lamps. And in the centre of that shadow was a shape formed of deeper darkness. The shape of a man.

He sprang towards it, wrenching his screwdriver free of his coat, bringing it up and around to blaze green into the heart of the gloom. 

It was empty. There was no one there. 

The Doctor jerked the screwdriver right, then left, then behind him, flailing desperately at shadows. The screwdriver’s buzz grew almost to a scream, but the result was the same. The corridor was empty. He was alone. 

He flipped off the screwdriver and put it back into his pocket. He took the pin out of his tie and allowed it to unfold around his neck. He opened his bedroom door, listened to the gentle creek in the darkness and then turned to the deserted hallway one last time.

“That isn’t the plumbing,” he said.


	3. Bounded in a Nutshell

Amy was woken by a gentle but insistent tapping sound. She surfaced from sleep slowly enough that it took her a few seconds to notice the absence of the warm hum of the TARDIS. By now, that sound was familiar enough to her that it always felt slightly odd when she woke up and couldn’t hear it. This was one of those mornings, and it always took her a little while to compose her thoughts enough to remember exactly where and when she’d been when she’d gone to sleep. 

“Lady Amelia?” 

If it hadn’t been for the first word, she might have embarrassed herself by shouting for Aunt Sharon to leave her to sleep, but instead she just called, “Yes?”

“I am sorry to wake you, Lady Amelia, but you are invited to breakfast.” 

Amy finally opened her eyes. “Breakfast?”

“Yes, Lady Amelia. His Majesty asks if you and the Doctor would care to join him for breakfast in half an hour.” 

“Well… certainly,” Amy replied. “Yeah, of course. We’d love to.” 

“I shall tell His Majesty and return in half an hour to escort you to his apartments.” 

She could just hear the sound of steps receding down the corridor. “Thanks!” she called after them.

Half an hour didn’t give her long, so she stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom. Ten minutes later, wrapped in a surprisingly fluffy towel, she examined the contents of the wardrobe and wondered if the servants on Peladon were that clever, or if the Doctor had somehow snuck into her room with an armful of dresses while she was asleep. Pushing the thought aside, she eventually settled on a white dress with buttons up the front, a ruffled skirt and a frilly collar that she had to button around her neck. Posing in front of the mirror, she thought she would make a good Whistler painting.

She took longer than she thought to arrange her hair and blamed her inability to concentrate on the fact she was still not a morning person. She was excited at the thought of having breakfast with a king – even one she’d been dancing with – but smiling into the mirror was taking more effort than it should. She told herself it was just because the Whistler comparison had made her think of Vincent. 

Despite this, she managed to be ready with five minutes to spare and spent them trying to find the Doctor. He didn’t answer his door when she knocked, so she went in. The room was empty and either he’d made his bed very well or he hadn’t slept in it. Closer examination of the bedside table revealed a note in his spidery handwriting: Pond, gone to see a man about a pipe. See you at the dress rehearsal. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

The last line made Amy smile. She could spend her entire life trying to think of something the Doctor wouldn’t do. 

She left the room just in time to avoid bumping into a man whose head only came up to her shoulder, but what he lacked in height he made up for in muscular bulk. He gave her a short bow and she wondered if she should return it or take her chance with a curtsey, but he didn’t seem to expect it. 

“Lady Amelia. I am Telamon, the king’s steward. Will the Doctor be joining you?”

“Nope. He… got an early start. Said he wasn’t hungry.” 

“Very well. Follow me, please.” 

He led her through the guest wing and into a different part of the castle. They passed a thick double door opened by another guard armed with a formal pike. As Amy went through, she realised that he also had some kind of rifle slung behind his back. 

The royal apartments felt less formal than the rest of the castle. The floors were smooth wood that clicked against her heels, except when she passed over the decorative carpets. There were still portraits on the wall, but there was also the odd picture. Amy didn’t have time to do much more than glance at them as she passed, but some of them looked almost like normal family photos. 

The door they eventually reached was opened by another guard, this one wearing a much plainer suit, but in the same emerald green as the others. He watched both of them carefully, his jacket hanging suspiciously open. 

“Lady Amelia, Your Majesty.” 

The room on the other side was roughly circular, well lit from a pattern of oval windows above head height. The walls were hung with tapestries depicting various aspects of Peladonain life, but the focus of the room was on the small square table in its centre. It was laid for four, but only King Harulan was standing beside it. He was wearing a much simpler version of the previous night’s uniform, a dark green suit jacket whose shoulders bore several patches and a badge with the emblem of a crown in the centre of a diagonal cross. 

“Thank you, Telamon,” he said. “Lady Amelia, will the Doctor be joining us?”

“No,” Amy told him. “He said there was something else he had to do.” 

The king nodded. “My mother also declined the invitation.” 

Amy smiled. “Never mind, I’m sure we can manage with just the two of us.” 

“Yes, certainly.” He turned back to the steward. “Ask for the food to be sent in.” 

The king pulled out a chair for her, and Amy nervously lowered herself into it. He sat opposite her and didn’t speak as plate after plate of steamed fruit was placed on the table by the servants. Amy recognised some of it – some of the fruit was even from Earth – but most of it she’d never seen before. 

“I apologise,” the king said. “I was expecting four. And… I wasn’t sure what you liked.”

“Good thing the Doctor isn’t here then,” Amy replied. “He might’ve asked for fish custard.”

“Fish custard?” The king repeated. “Is that a delicacy on his planet?”

“I don’t know… Your Majesty.” Amy shrugged. “It might be. For all I know, it is.” 

She carefully took a slice of apple, making sure she didn’t get any of the juice on her dress. When she looked up, the king was still sitting stiffly and she was surprised to see that familiar expression of someone working up the courage to say something.

“Lady Amelia… I’d just like to say that it was an honour to dance with you last night.” 

Amy flushed. “I’ve never danced with a king before.”

“Never the less, you did it very well.” 

“Thanks, Your Majesty. I… really liked it too.” 

The king gave a faint sigh of relief and then glanced over his shoulder, almost as if he were afraid of being overheard. “Lady Amelia, since we are alone, if you like, you can call me Harulan.” 

She smiled. “Then, Harulan, since we’re alone, you should call me Amy.”

“Amy,” he said cautiously. “It’s a beautiful name.”

“Everyone else always says they prefer Amelia,” Amy said quietly.

Harulan opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. He gave her awkward smile and then turned back to his plate. She turned her attention to something bulbous and pink that tasted a bit like a pear. Neither of them spoke for several mouthfuls, until Amy decided she’d had enough of the silence. 

“So, tell me what the Doctor did to get so well known here.” 

Harulan gave her another little smile, this one of relief. “The Doctor is a legend on Peladon. He’s something of a fairy tale and a bed time story. There are many versions of the story, but in each one he arrives in a time of danger, tames a monster, saves the kingdom and helps the king rule wisely and fairly.” He dropped his head and smiled. “Of course, the royal records are more accurate than that, but no king wants to spoil a good story.” 

“That sounds just like him.”

“Do they tell stories of him on Earth too?” 

Amy hesitated. “Some people do. They say he falls out of the sky to save scared little girls from monsters, and sometimes if these girls wait long enough he’ll come back to them when they’re grown up and show them the universe. Little girls dream about him and little boys…” 

Her voice died. The next words wouldn’t come. She blinked and realised that Harulan was being blurred by the tears forming in her eyes. She flushed with embarrassment, looked away, and blinked forcefully several times to clear them away. 

“Amy, are you alright?” 

“Fine. I’m fine.” She blinked again. “I just… I didn’t sleep very well, that’s all.” She searched desperately for something else to talk about and her eyes settled on his epaulettes. “Do all kings of Peladon wear uniforms to breakfast?”

Harulan shook his head. “No. But… I must wear something when I’m entertaining honoured guests.”

Amy grinned. “Oh yeah? You’re not the first squaddie who’s tried to impress me. What’s it for?”

“This is just my uniform,” Harulan told her. “Last night I was wearing the formal dress of the Peladon Household Cavalry.” 

“Cavalry? So… you ride a horse then?”

He gave her a confused look. “No. We fly helicopters.” 

“Helicopters?” Amy exclaimed. “That’s amazing. So, are you a colonel? Or a general?”

“No.” Harulan tugged at the single bar on his epaulettes. “Technically I’m just a cornet… a junior lieutenant.” 

“Why’s that? You’re the king!” 

“Cornet was the highest rank I earned before I had to leave the regiment.” 

Amy missed the change in his tone. “Why’s that?” she asked.

“My father died,” he said. 

That brought her up short. “So… you had to…”

“Do my duty,” Harulan finished. “I was the heir to the throne.” 

“Oh god,” Amy whispered, realising something that hadn’t registered until now. “You’ve been king for ten years. How old were you?”

“I was sixteen.” 

“Sixteen?” She repeated. “I couldn’t even get a job in a shop when I was sixteen and you had to rule an entire planet.” 

Harulan shrugged and did his best to smile. “Peladon’s monarchy is not what it once was. Every generation the Parliament gains a little more power. My mother foresees a time when this planet will have no further need for kings or queens. But until then… Amy, if you had a duty to do, would you let anything get in the way?”

“I don’t know,” Amy murmured. “I’m not the person you should ask.” 

“In any case,” Harulan went on, “I do not have to rule alone. I have my mother, my father’s advisors and my Privy Council. And… one day, I will have a queen to stand beside me.” 

He looked over the table at her, and Amy had no trouble understanding the question in that look. She dropped her head and focussed on the pattern of the tablecloth as her eyes started to burn and the sadness threatened to overwhelm her again. 

When she finally looked up, Harulan was sitting straight in the chair again, his face neutral. She let out a little sigh of relief that he had gotten the message.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I… I just can’t.” 

A knock on the door saved her from hearing his reply. Harulan seemed glad to have something else to focus on as Telamon came in. 

“Your Majesty, you gave instructions to investigate the Doctor’s arrival?” 

The king nodded. “I did. Have you found something?” 

“I have, Your Majesty. I made some enquires and found out how the Chamberlain knew the Doctor was coming. We received this a week ago. Apparently it simply appeared amongst the communications.”

He held out a letter. The king took it, carefully read it and then handed it to Amy. The words blurred before her eyes for a moment and then she could read them clearly.

“I know it has been many years since my last visit, but I have heard that the King of Peladon is about to celebrate his jubilee and I would be honoured if I could take up my standing invitation and attend. I will be bringing with me my companion, Lady Amelia of Inverness. The Doctor, High Physician of Peladon.” 

“Amy… Lady Amelia?” 

She shook her head. “That’s not his handwriting, and I’ve never seen him do this before. If he wanted to come he’d just have arrived, flashed the psychic paper and smiled until you let him in.”

“You weren’t to know,” the king said to Telamon. “Thank you, you’ve done well.”

“Yes, sire.”

As the steward slipped out of the room, Amy read the note again. “I should show this to him. He might think of something.” 

The king nodded. “Of course. I have to prepare for the dress rehearsal. I will see you there.”

“Yes.” Amy headed towards the door, but stopped half way through it and turned back. “Thank you for breakfast. Your Majesty.”

“It was my pleasure, Lady Amelia.” 

She clutched the letter tightly and strode away down the corridor. She was too busy thinking about where the Doctor might be to wonder why she had started to cry.

***

The Doctor stood on the outer battlements of Castle Peladon. To get out this far he had left the main enclosure of the keep, passed the visitor and reception wings – which were becoming more and more crowded as guests flooded in for the day’s celebrations – and even gone beyond the outer courtyards and landing pads. Out here, there was just the final outer wall and the sheer drop down the side of the cliff. 

From where he stood, the Doctor looked out on the harsh silhouettes of bleak, inhospitable mountains as they rose up to pierce the canopy of grey cloud. The wind whipped at his coat, his hair and his tie, every so often mixing with the sounds of one of the transports coming in to land. He watched one of the cavalry helicopters dance in the air above the castle, but wasn’t so preoccupied that he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps above the thump of its engines. 

“Doctor? It is very cold out here. Are you not cold?” 

He turned and smiled at the two aliens. “Not at all. Some people would call this a balmy day. Or even a hot day. Wouldn’t you, Kashak?” 

“This planet is not Mars,” Kashak replied. 

The Doctor nodded. “No, not it’s not. Less red, more grey. And it doesn’t have enough suns for you to get it confused with Alpha Centauri.” 

“You wished to speak to us,” Kashak interrupted. 

“Yes, I’m sorry. How long have you two been on Peladon? Here in the castle?” 

“Two weeks, Doctor,” Alpha Centauri answered. “They have done their best to make our stay as pleasant as possible.” 

“Two weeks. That’s great. I was wondering whether you’d heard anything interesting while you’d been here.” 

“You requested our presence to discuss intelligence,” Kashak said. 

The Doctor shook his head. “No! Not intelligence. This isn’t a military briefing, just a friendly chat about how things are on Peladon these days. It’s amazing how unwilling the castle staff are to have friendly chats so I thought I’d try you two. After all, Ice Warriors would never send an ambassador anywhere without finding out everything they can about it first. So, tell me, what do you know?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You can’t get anything from nothing. Try again.”

Kashak’s expression did not change. “Nothing, Doctor.”

“Is it that you have nothing, or that you don’t have anything you’ll share with me?”

“You are not an enemy of Mars, Doctor. Neither are you a friend.”

He held the Ice Warrior’s dull red gaze for a few seconds, then dropped his head. “Okay.” He spun towards Alpha Centauri. “Okay, gossip then. Lots of gossip in a place this size.”

The other alien bobbed nervously. “Of course, Doctor. I have heard many rumours during my time here. But I will have to report most of these to my superiors on my return. It is the duty of an ambassador.” 

“Of course it is. But what about the gossip you won’t report?”

“I do not know if I should say, Doctor.”

“Then let me guess.” The Doctor smiled. “Ghosts?” 

“Ghosts?” Kashak hissed.

“Yes. You know. Ghosts. Spectres, visions, impossible things that you shouldn’t see but you see anyway.” 

Alpha Centauri’s limbs twitched convulsively for a few seconds. “Why would I have heard gossip about this?”

“Because when people see the impossible, they don’t keep quiet about it.” 

The giant eye swivelled back and forth between the Doctor and the Ice Warrior several times before finally settling on the Doctor’s shoes. “You must understand that no one has spoken to me directly,” he began. “But I have overheard conversations between the castle staff. They may not be the most reliable of sources.” 

“What did they say?” 

The alien quailed and his voice rose even higher. “Several separate members of staff discussed seeing a man in the corridors who was there one moment and gone the next. A few even reported seeing the man in sealed rooms. Some did describe him as a ghost.” 

“Did they say what this man looked like?” 

“I do not know! They did not say, and human descriptions mean little to me.” 

The Doctor nodded. “Calm down, it’s alright. Just one more question. How long has this been going on for?” 

“It began before our arrival. That is all I know, Doctor.” 

“Okay, okay,” the Doctor smiled. “What about you, Kashak? Would you like to add anything since your friend has been so helpful?” 

“Nothing, Doctor.” 

“Nothing,” the Doctor repeated. “Alright then. How about a harmless answer to a harmless question?” 

“Ask, Doctor.” 

“Has anyone mentioned Aggedor?” 

“No one, Doctor. We have no intelligence on Peladon’s monster.”

“I have heard nothing about Aggedor either,” Alpha Centauri added. 

A device on the Ice Warrior’s wrist let out a shrill whistle. “We must go,” she said. “The jubilee rehearsal is about to begin.” 

“Yes, yes, run along,” the Doctor turned away and lent on the parapet. “I’ll catch up. We wouldn’t want anyone to think we’d been talking, now would we?” 

He kept his eyes on the mountains, tracing the sharp lines of the peaks and trying to focus for a little while on their harsh beauty rather than the thoughts whirling through his mind. He tried and failed for five minutes before he gave up and turned away. He took the long route back to the keep and entered through a totally different door to the one the ambassadors had taken. 

The guard on the other side spun as the door opened and levelled his pike. “Who goes there?”

“Hello, I’m the Doctor. And I’m lost. I’m supposed to be at the dress rehearsal, but I went for a walk and now I’m not sure where I am. Or where I’m supposed to be.” 

The guard snapped to attention. “Follow me, sir.”

The Doctor strolled after him, casually keeping up with the military march. Eventually, they came across a steward, who the guard asked to take the Doctor to the Great Hall and then returned to his post. Somewhere else in the corridors, the Doctor could hear the rising roar of conversation, but the steward’s route took them around it, to a small side door which still warranted its own guard. In his full formal livery, that guard made quite a lot of noise coming to attention and even more opening the door. The Doctor nodded in appreciation and walked through into the Great Hall. 

It certainly deserved the name. It was at least twice the size of the ballroom from the night before and seemed to have been carved directly out of the mountain. At the top end of the room was a long wooden table where members of the royal household would sit. It was broken in the middle to leave a gap for the chairs of the King and the Queen Mother and a little way in front of the throne was a plinth with a lectern set up on it. Two other tables ran lengthways down the room, providing seating for various other Peladonian dignitaries. At least four balconies on each side looked down on the hall, and the Doctor spotted Kashak and Alpha Centauri in one of them. 

“Doctor! Over here!”

He looked around to see Amy waving at him from the far side of the High Table, gesturing to the empty chair beside her once she was sure she had his attention. The Doctor waved back and started moving through the crowd. Almost all the people in the hall were dressed in their day clothes; it was only a run-through and they were saving their formal dress for the proper ceremony that evening. Passing through the gaps between the tables, he paused for just long enough to note the empty spaces where he imagined the recording and transmission equipment would be set up during the actual ceremony so they could survey the tables and focus on the king as he gave his speech from the lectern. 

“Come on, Doctor!” Amy called as he bobbed in and out of sight. “I’ve been looking for you for ages. Where were you?” 

He ducked around someone’s head for long enough to call, “Just seeing the sights, Pond.” 

Even as he lost sight of her, he heard the disbelief in her laugh. Then the last of the crowd parted and he was next to the table. He opened his mouth to tell her all about the view from the walls, but never got to speak a word. 

The blood froze in his veins. For a moment, he thought he felt his hearts stop beating. His entire mind screamed at him, refusing to accept the evidence of his senses. 

Rory Williams was sitting in his chair.


	4. Though Hell Itself Should Gape

There were still voices all around him, but they seemed to be coming from very far away. The outside world dimmed as the Doctor focussed all his attention on the young man in his chair, the young man who couldn’t possibly be anywhere, let alone sitting in the Doctor’s place. 

And he looked so normal. Just sitting there in his plaid shirt, jeans and trainers. His grey eyes looked up at the Doctor with cheerful recognition, his mouth balanced at the beginning of a smile. 

“Doctor!” Amy’s voice finally registered with him; she must have said his name several times by now. “Are you alright?” 

“Amy…” 

Her name was all he could manage. The figure in the chair failed to react to her just as she failed to react to it. As Amy reached out for him, she came within millimetres of brushing the spectre’s hair. 

“What is it?” she asked. 

“I… It’s…” 

He tore his eyes from the boy who didn’t exist and focussed all his attention on Amy, whose face was now pale with concern. He squeezed his eyes shut, forced himself to breathe normally and tried to stem the desperate pounding of his hearts. 

Then he opened his eyes again. And the chair was empty. 

“Doctor, tell me what’s wrong.” 

He looked down at the empty seat again, then summoned a smile and did his best to lie to her. “Oh, sorry. Nothing. It was nothing. Just took a funny turn.” He leaned close and whispered loudly in her ear, “I’m not as young as I used to be.” 

Her expression told him she didn’t believe him, but at least she didn’t ask any more questions, she just said, “You should sit down.” 

“Sit down.” He nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, sit down. I should definitely sit down.” 

He gave the empty chair another careful look. There was nothing there but a collection of red velvet cushions. He waved his hand back and forth through the air above it.

“Doctor…” Amy began.

“I’m fine, yes. Just… doing some checks.” 

He slowly and cautiously lowered himself into the chair. The instant he touched the cushions, he sagged with relief. Then he noticed that his right hand had been gripping the chair so hard it had turned white and it hurt to let go. 

“What’s wrong, Doctor?”

Before he had to lie to her again, a new, artificially amplified voice rang through the hall. “My lords, ladies and gentlemen.” It was Phineas, standing between the tables with a lapel microphone attached to his formal purple robes. “Honoured guests. Welcome. Thank you for attending this rehearsal. In a few moments, His Majesty will make his entrance. When he is announced, please all stand. When the doors open, the Peladon Anthem will begin and he will process in with his retinue and Her Majesty the Queen Mother. Once he sits, you may all sit as well.” He gave everyone a cautious smile. “If anyone has any questions, now is the time to ask them. No? Good.” 

Phineas nodded to one of the footmen, who hurried out of the doors. As he took his seat, the Doctor noticed that he glanced questioningly at an empty seat on the far side of the thrones and whispered a question to its neighbour. 

The noise in the room had mostly died away, but there was still enough conversation for the acoustics of the room to amplify them to a dull rumble. Then, for just a moment, there was another sound mixed in with the voices: a higher, fiercer sound like the echo of a far-away roar. A few people’s heads jerked in response. On the balcony, Kashak slowly looked from side to side. But almost as soon as it registered, it had gone, and only a few seemed to have heard it. 

“Doctor,” Amy hissed. “What was that?”

“You heard it?”

“Of course I heard it. What was it?” 

The Doctor forced himself to remain still in his chair and keep smiling. “Later. I promise.” 

“But…”

In front of the door, the major-domo slammed his ceremonial golden staff into the stone floor three times. By the time the booming echoes had faded, the room was completely silent. 

“His Majesty, Harulan the Fourth. King of Peladon.” 

Everyone stood. The room was silent. For some reason, the Doctor found himself glancing over towards the empty seat, wishing he knew who was supposed to sit there. 

Then, beyond the range of human hearing, his ears picked up the faintest sound of rapid footsteps on stone. Somewhere, getting closer, someone was running. 

The double doors at the far end of the hall swung majestically open. The ten-piece band at the back of the room struck up with the waltz-like anthem as King Harulan began his march towards the throne, his green robes sparkling with silver trappings and multi-coloured jewels. 

He was less than half way through the hall when there was a crash from somewhere above. Everyone in the hall heard the scream: high, desperate and terrified. The band faltered and then stopped entirely. Then one of the balcony doors opened and a man charged through them, running as fast as he could. He reached the parapet wall in less than a second, and didn’t stop. His legs struck the stone and then he was turning over and over, hands clawing at the empty air, still screaming as he fell. He hit one of the tables with a crash and the scream finally ended as he rolled over and over, off the wood and onto the cold stone floor where he stopped, wide eyes fixed on the ceiling, breath coming in shallow gasps. 

The Doctor reached him at the same time as the king, who had to shove his bodyguards aside to reach the fallen man. It was the Apothecary. 

“Everyone stand back!” The king shouted.

The approaching guests froze, everyone except for Amy, who ducked past them to stand at the Doctor’s side. “What do we do?” she whispered. “Oh god, what do we do?” 

The Doctor said nothing. The dying man’s eyes roamed wildly over the faces staring down at him and fixed on a point somewhere above him.

“Harulan…” he gasped. “I’m… sorry…”

“Doctor, please,” the king said. “Is there nothing you can do for him?”

The Apothecary’s breathing was already shallower. The gasps were seconds apart. Each one fainter than the last. The eyes were unfocussed, still staring upwards. 

“Doctor!” Amy pulled desperately on his sleeve. “Doctor, look!”

She pointed upwards, following the Apothecary’s eye-line. The Doctor didn’t have time to worry what she might see as he looked up, but the balcony she was pointing to was empty.

“What is it?”

Amy’s voice went very quiet. “There. Can’t you see him?” 

He blinked once, then twice, but the balcony remained empty. Amy looked back at him, eyes wide with fear and confusion.

“But he’s…” her voice faltered and she blinked. “He’s… he was there.” 

“Doctor.” Behind him, the king straightened up. “I… think it’s over.” 

The Doctor turned away from Amy. At their feet, the ragged, slow gasps had finally stopped. For appearance’s sake, the Doctor made a clumsy attempt to check for a pulse, but he already knew the Apothecary was dead. 

***

An hour later, the Doctor sat on his bed, re-reading the note he hadn’t written. The Great Hall had been cordoned off, the guests were all having lunch in their rooms, and between the galactic press outside and the nervous guards at all the doors there was no way he was going to be able to get outside to the TARDIS. 

The note slipped from his fingers as he closed his eyes and listened. On the edge of his senses, footsteps travelled down the corridors, worried voices spoke conversations too far away to hear, the ever-present Peladon wind danced around the castle and water gurgled through the ancient building’s new veins. And he heard more than that: the stones creaked under the weight of the ages, shifting and crackling against each other; people long gone and yet to come walked, danced and ran through the shifting pathways of the halls; minds burned bright and brilliant, focussing on the past and future in their own small ways, all struggling to build whole pictures out of jigsaws with missing pieces. 

The knock on the door sounded louder than the toll of the Cloister Bell. The Doctor jumped, sprang forward and wrenched the door open. 

“Yes, what is it?”

“Doctor…” the nervous servant on the other side asked. “Lunch is being served. Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to eat?”

“No, no.” The Doctor shook his head firmly. “No time for food. Too much to do. Not enough time.” 

He slammed the door and turned around. Rory was standing by the bed. 

For a long moment, the Doctor watched him before he was able to articulate the only thought he could form: “This is impossible.” 

The thing that looked like Rory shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “You’re the expert, not me.” 

“But… but this isn’t possible. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be anywhere. You don’t just not exist, you never existed.” 

“You remember me,” Rory said. 

“I’m a Time Lord,” the Doctor spat back. “What are you? Why do you look like Rory?”

“I am Rory.” 

“Prove it. Tell me something only Rory would know.” 

A very familiar expression of confusion flitted across the apparition’s face. “But… if only I’d know it… how would you know if I was lying?” 

The Doctor didn’t let that stop him. “Try again.” 

The spectre’s expression changed, became something much sadder and much more human, and he started talking to the floor at the Doctor’s feet. “She asked me to dress as you. She cut holes in my dad’s old shirts and nearly strangled me with one of his ties and I helped her pretend you’d kept your promise.” 

The silence in between them stretched, until it seemed like it would last forever, and all the Doctor could do was whisper, “Rory?” 

Then the door shivered under the weight of some very energetic knocking. “Doctor!” Amy called through it. “Doctor!”

“Amy?”

He backed towards the door, keeping his eyes on Rory with all the focus of a man who’d faced Weeping Angels. But his hands fumbled with the handle and despite knowing exactly what would happen, he had to turn around to turn it properly. Amy strode through, stopped beside the bed and looked around the empty room.

“Who were you talking to?” 

“No one. I wasn’t talking to anyone.”

“Yes you were. I heard you.” 

“Oh, was I? I told you I was trying to stop talking to myself. I thought I had, but old habits die hard.” 

Amy sat down on the bed. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I am. Are you? You said you were going to have eat in your room, so why aren’t you?”

“I… I couldn’t,” she said quietly. “I kept thinking about that guy. I mean, he fell of the balcony and he died right in front of us and there was nothing we could do.” 

“Sometimes there isn’t,” the Doctor murmured. 

She looked up at him, giving him a sharp, searching look. “And then there was that man on the balcony. The one you couldn’t see. I swear he was there, Doctor, just like he was in my room last night. Why could I see him? Why could I if no one else could?”

“What did he look like?” 

“What?”

“Describe him to me. Please.” 

Amy sighed. “He was tall, thin, sort of untidy brown hair and he was wearing green. It was only for a few seconds and he was on a balcony.”

The Doctor bent down and looked straight into her eyes. “Amy, this is important, really very important. You have to tell me if you’ve ever seen him before.” 

“Before last night? I don’t think so. I didn’t recognise him. Why’s it so important?”

He pushed way, strode into the corner and pivoted again. “It just might be.”

“Doctor.” The uncertainty was back in her voice. “When they brought my lunch, the steward asked if I’d seen the ghost. He wouldn’t tell me about it, but he said you’d been asking everyone about ghosts. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because,” the Doctor said. “Because there’s no such thing as ghosts. There are visions, repressed memories, temporal rifts, psychic echoes. There are no ghosts.” 

“How do you know?”

“I’m the Doctor.” 

Amy sprang to her feet. “And that’s it, is it? You’re the Doctor and that’s the end of the conversation. You ask me all these questions and you won’t tell me why, but you expect me to answer you anyway. And then you act like it’s all nothing.” 

“I’m just trying to keep you safe,” the Doctor whispered. 

“Safe?” Amy responded. “You leave me alone in a forest full of killer statues, get me captured by lizard men and then bring me to a church to fight an invisible monster and now you want to keep me safe? So where in this castle that you say can’t possibly be haunted is safe?” 

“As far away from me as possible,” the Doctor said. 

That stopped her. “Doctor…” she began. 

“No, you’re right, Amy.” He reached past her and opened the door. “You should go. You need to try and eat something. Then you can pick a dress for the party this evening. Spend the day however you like. Run along, Pond.” 

He closed the door on her expression of complete incomprehension. She called through it, but after a few minutes without a response, she gave up. The Doctor stood alone in the room, leaning against the bedframe as if he was waiting for something. 

Five minutes passed, and nothing happened. The Doctor sighed, checked his screwdriver was in place, then quietly opened the door and went out.


	5. There’s Rue For You

The Doctor wandered along the castle’s corridors. Every few junctions he would make a turn at random, then stop and scan the wall with the screwdriver. So far, none of the results had satisfied him. Eventually he gave up, stopped and leaned against the wall, listening to the soft burble of the water on the other side. 

That was where one of the servants found him, several minutes later, with his eyes closed as though he had fallen asleep on his feet.

“Are you alright, sir?”

The Doctor’s eyes snapped open. “Yes. Fine. I wonder, could you take me to the Federation ambassadors? I need to ask them for a favour.” 

“Certainly, sir. Please follow me.” 

The ambassadors’ rooms were located in one of the more recent extensions to the castle. This area looked distinctly more modern: the corridors were carpeted and the walls painted a plain, pleasant cream colour. At the far end, nearest the outer wall, the central heating had been switched off and as a result there was a perceptible chill in the air. The Doctor smiled and rapped on the door. 

Kashak opened it and looked at him questioningly. However, despite her bulk, the Ice Warrior left just enough of a gap for the Doctor to slip through the door and into the room on the other side. As he had expected, it was totally bare beyond two armoured travel cases in one corner and a futon on the floor that left the bed undisturbed. It was also cold enough that he could see his breath in the air.

“Don’t mind me barging in,” he said, turning back to the room’s owner. “I’ll let you get back to getting ready as soon as I can. I just need a favour.” 

“What favour, Doctor?” Kashak asked. 

“I need to borrow something. Your sonic disruptor.” 

“I did not come to Peladon for battle, Doctor.” 

“Of course not,” the Doctor smiled. “But you would have come with your formal armour, including, I think, a disruptor.” 

“Why do you require it?” 

The Doctor produced his screwdriver, tossed it into the air and caught it again. “You aren’t the only ones with sonic technology. And this does a lot more than just sonic. It also stretches the definition of ‘screwdriver’ to breaking point. But that’s not the point. The point is that it’s a bit under-powered for what I need to do. I could just pop back to the TARDIS, but the castle’s surrounded by the press and I don’t know if I have time. Then I realised that a modified sonic disruptor is just what I needed and I was lucky enough to know someone who’d certainly have brought one with her to Peladon.” 

“What modifications do you intend?”

“Lend me your disruptor and I’ll tell you.”

Kashak thought for a moment. “You do not intend harm?”

“I’m the Doctor.”

“That is why I ask.” 

“No. No harm. Just to help me find something.” 

“Very well.”

Kashak opened one of the cases and produced a pistol designed to look as if it had been fashioned from a shard of ice. There were patterns complex swirls running down the long barrel and overlapping Martian symbols engraved into the ornate handle. Designed as it was for an Ice Warrior’s talons, the Doctor held it in both hands and kept his fingers well away from the trigger as he examined it. 

“Look at you,” he whispered. 

“It has been passed down through my clan for generations,” Kashak told him. “Treat it with respect.” 

The Doctor carefully sat down on the futon with his legs crossed and the disruptor in front of him. As he did so, Alpha Centauri waddled into the room.

“Kashak, why is your door open? All the cold will get out. Oh! Doctor! What are you doing?”

“Modifying Kashak’s ceremonial sonic disruptor. Very carefully.” 

“But why?” Alpha Centauri took a position on the far side of the room as the Doctor took careful aim with his screwdriver. “That could be very dangerous.” 

“That’s never stopped him before.” 

The Doctor didn’t look up at the sound of the voice. He kept his eyes on the disruptor and concentrated on controlling the screwdriver. 

“You still have not explained your purpose,” Kashak said.

“He doesn’t do that much either.” 

“I need to concentrate,” the Doctor hissed, his voice barely audible over the buzz of the screwdriver. 

“I am aware of that,” Kashak responded. 

“What? Sorry. Delicate work. Sure you understand.” 

“Oh, so now you’re ignoring me are you? Not like it’s the first time.” 

The Doctor paused the sonic and looked up. “Alpha Centauri, could you do something for me? Count the people in this room. For safety reasons.” 

Alpha Centauri’s eye swivelled around the room. “It is just you, myself and Kashak.”

“You’re certain?”

“We three are alone, Doctor,” Kashak confirmed. 

“Are you unwell, Doctor?” Alpha Centauri asked nervously. 

The Doctor shook his head and returned his attention to the disruptor. “No. Just… checking.” 

“You still have not answered my question,” Kashak said.

“My screwdriver hasn’t got enough power. Oh, I said that… I need to find the catacombs but the sonic can’t scan through all that moving water in the walls… The best way to do that is echo-location, but I need a more powerful signal… So I’m trying to modify the disruptor to emit a burst of harmless sound and then see if there’s anything in the castle it doesn’t bounce off. Find the empty space, find the catacombs… There, finished.” 

“Is it safe?” 

“Yes, of course. Quite certain. Perfectly safe.” 

Kashak examined the disruptor. “Why are you so convinced there are catacombs?” 

The Doctor clambered to his feet. “Because I can hear Aggedor. I can hear him all over the castle. Either there’s more than one or he’s echoing through the catacombs. Even if everyone’s forgotten about them, they must still be there. If I can find the entrance, I can find Aggedor. And if I can find him then I can find out what’s going on.” 

“What is happening on Peladon?” Alpha Centauri asked. 

“I don’t know. Where’s the fun in knowing without looking?”

“What if you are mistaken?” 

The Doctor shook his head. “I’m not hearing things. If I was hearing things I could be seeing things.” He finally looked over to the bed and the human boy only he could see sitting there and silently watching him. “And I’m not going mad. I’m not ready to go mad. Not yet.” 

***

For the second time that day, Amy turned in front of the mirror. This dress was much more extravagant than the one she had been wearing earlier, a rich blue with a fuller skirt and sleeves that had droplet jewels running down them. She had to practice walking across the room to make sure she didn’t stand on the fabric, but by now was getting much more confident moving around in such long skirts.

However, she had only changed to pass the time and that left her nothing else to do for the next few hours until the jubilee celebration started. She decided that she had not got all dressed up to sit in her room and read, and since there was no sign of the Doctor – she fought back the urge to have someone check to make sure the TARDIS was still where they’d left it – that only left one person in the castle she really wanted to talk to. 

She tried not to look nervous as she approached the royal apartments. One thing she had learned in her time as a kissogram was never to show that a man was making her nervous. If the king was busy, she could always find someone else in the castle to keep her company. 

The guards left her standing outside the doors for two long minutes before they came back to lead her to the king’s apartments. She was announced into a different room, one which felt a lot more private and personal than where they had eaten breakfast. There were objects dropped in corners and left there, and personal photos stuck to the walls. It looked less like an apartment belonging to a king as the living room of a slightly disorganised student.

The king was standing by a small desk in the corner in a long-sleeved white undershirt, holding a few sheets of paper in one hand and a pen in the other. Sitting in a chair on the other side of the room – although he stood when Amy came in – was Telamon. 

“Am I interrupting?” Amy asked. 

“Of course not, Lady Amelia. We were just going through my speech one more time. I think we have it ready. Telamon?”

“I think so, sire.” 

“So what can the King of Peladon do for you, Lady Amelia?” 

Amy looked hesitantly over at Telamon, then back at the king. “It’s the Doctor. He’s gone off on his own again and he won’t tell me why. He mentioned something called Aggedor but he didn’t tell me what that is.” 

“Aggedor?” Telemon repeated. 

“Yeah. What is that?” 

“Why don’t you tell her, Telamon?” 

Telamon shook his head. “I think she would rather hear it from you, sire. I’m afraid I have other duties to attend to.” 

The king nodded. “Then you should attend to them.” He handed him a copy of the speech. “I can spare Lady Amelia ten minutes. On your way, give this to the teleprompter operator.” 

“Yes, sire. I’ll return shortly. Always a pleasure, sire.” 

He left Amy and the king alone. Amy wondered if she had known the young man long enough to confide in him, but she desperately needed someone to listen to her fears, even if they turned out to be nothing.

“Harluan, I’m worried about him.”

“Telamon?”

“No, the Doctor. What’s Aggedor?” 

Harulan gestured to a chair. Amy adjusted her dress several times and sat down. Harulan sat opposite her. 

“Aggedor is like the Doctor. He is a fairy tale who happens to be real. He is the monster of the stories.”

“But he’s real? What is he?”

Harulan smiled. “In reality, the Aggedor are just animals. Large, intelligent and dangerous, but animals none the less. Ever since the days of King Peladon they have been considered the mascots of the royal family. They’ve been thought to be extinct several times, but they survive. These days they are kept in special preserves around the planet. Perhaps after all this is over, I could you to see one.”

“I’d like that.” Amy gave him an awkward smile in return. “But what does this have to do with the Doctor?”

“The records say that both times the Doctor was involved with this planet, someone was manipulating Aggedor. Perhaps he has heard the stories from the castle staff of the howls.” 

“The howls?”

“Another Peladon legend, Amy. Many believe that if some terrible disaster threatens Peladon, Aggedor will howl as warning.” 

“So what’s he expect to do if he finds Aggedor? Ask him what’s going on?” 

Harulan shrugged. “Perhaps. He is the Doctor, after all.” 

“He may be,” Amy responded. “And I’ve seen him do a lot of amazing things, but that doesn’t mean he can talk to lions, tigers and bears. Or do it without telling me why.” 

“Perhaps he is trying to protect you.”

“Doesn’t mean he has to keep secrets.” 

Harulan looked at her for a long moment and sighed. “Sometimes it does.” 

“Why?” Amy demanded.

“Amy…” Harulan began, then hesitated. “Whatever is happening, a man has died.”

Amy flinched. “Oh god, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Did you… did you know the Apothecary well?”

“All my life,” Harulan answered. “He was one of my father’s closest friends. They met at university. He is… he was one of the first people I would ask for advice. I even asked him what he thought of you, last night.”

“Oh. What did he say?”

Harulan gave her a small smile. “To beware red-headed women. Especially beautiful ones.” 

“And what did you say?” 

“That your hair is orange.” 

Amy flinched, looked away and then nodded as she tried to smile. “It is.” 

“My father told me once that he had his heart broken by a red-headed girl,” Harulan went on, almost speaking to himself. “When they were both much younger. He took my father’s death very hard. But he was always there for me.” 

Amy asked the question before she had time to think about it: “How did your father die?”

Harulan looked up, straight at her and for a moment his eyes were shimmering. He blinked and it was gone. Amy opened her mouth to take back the question, but he shook his head faintly.

“He fell,” Harulan said eventually, so quietly Amy barely heard him. “He was walking the battlements one night. He was alone. It was dark. Some parts of the walls are fragile, and it’s easy to slip. I was away at the time. It was the Apothecary who called me to tell me what had happened. My father was dead… and I was king of Peladon.” 

They sat in silence for a moment, before Amy did her best to offer comfort and understanding. “I lost my parents, too.”

“How?”

Her mind fought the layers of confusion, pain and fear that lay between her and the answer and, as always, lost, so that all she could say was, “It was a long time ago.”

Another long, painful silent moment passed as they both struggled for words they didn’t know. After a while, they both looked away, no longer wanting to see their own pain reflected in the other’s eyes. Finally, Harulan stood and went back over to the desk and started turning over the notes for his speech. 

Amy awkwardly stood, straightened her dress and said, “I should go.” 

“I’m sorry,” Harulan muttered, without turning around.

“No, it’s okay.” Amy did her best to smile and almost succeeded. “I’d better find the Doctor before he starts drilling holes in your walls. This is the second time he’s tried to leave me behind to fight a monster.”

“Did you follow him then?” 

Amy nodded. “I think I always will.” 

“Then the Doctor is blessed. That kind of loyalty is very rare.” 

“Yeah,” Amy whispered. “It is.”

Harulan finally turned. “Lady Amelia, on your way out, could you ask Telamon to come back in? I don’t know what’s keeping him. His is the third door on the first left.”

“Certainly… Your Majesty.” 

She turned towards the door, but had barely touched the handle when he spoke again. “Amy?”

“Yeah?”

“You look beautiful.” 

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Despite the tears she could still feel in her eyes, Amy gave him a genuinely happy smile as she curtseyed and then went out into the corridor.

She took a moment to compose herself, gave an awkward smile to the guard outside the king’s room and received a stiff bow in return. She followed the corridor down, turned left and found the third door. She knocked, but heard nothing. Another knock, another moment of silence. 

“Hello? Telamon? Are you in there?” 

She put her ear to the door and listened. She thought she heard a faint sound from the other side, but couldn’t be sure. She hesitated for a moment, steeled herself with the knowledge she was here at the request of the king, and opened the door. 

It opened without a sound, and she froze. The man that no one else could see was standing in the centre of the room, watching her. He was standing next to Telamon, and the sight of Telamon stopped her heart. 

One end of a long decorative cord had been tied around the bedpost and passed through a ceiling fixture. The other end was looped around Telamon’s neck. He hung, still and silent, in the centre of the room. There was an overturned stool beside his dangling feet. 

All she could do for the longest moment was stare. Her body wouldn’t move. Her mind couldn’t think. Even the presence of the ghost hardly registered anymore. 

“Help,” she croaked. “Help! I need help!”

There was a clatter of steps in the corridor behind her. It was one of the guards. All she could do was dumbly nod into the room as she retreated into the corridor, leaning against the walls and struggling to stay on her feet. Other guards and staff rushed past her into the room, calls and shouts echoed down the corridor, but she couldn’t make any sense of them. 

Then Harulan charged down the corridor, courtiers scattering out of his way. “Let me through! Let me through!”

He stopped in front of Amy, seeing the shock on her face. “Please no,” he said. 

“It’s Telamon,” she whispered. 

“Sire,” one of the guards began, “you shouldn’t…”

“I want to see him!” the king shouted. 

Obediently, the gathering parted, and Harulan stood in the doorway as Amy had done, staring into the room for a moment that seemed to last forever. Then he collapsed against the door frame and stumbled out into the passageway.

“Telamon…” he murmured. “Telamon…”

“Sire… he’s dead.”

“Then cut him down, damn you! Get him down from there… please.” 

“Yes, sire.”

Harulan stumbled out of the doorway but shook away any attempt to help him. He took a few uncertain steps down the corridor, then slumped against the wall beside Amy. 

“Amy,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Amy.” 

Without really knowing why, she took his hand. He held onto it tightly. She leant against him. He leant against her. And they supported each other.


	6. If This Be Madness

The Doctor knew exactly where he was: four corridors away from the entrance to the wing where the senior castle staff lived, turn left, then right, then two more lefts and straight on until he reached the bottom of a flight of stairs. He wasn’t sure how he could know all that and still be lost. 

He looked cautiously down the spiral staircase, then walked a few steps up and listened carefully. Hearing nothing, he went back into the corridor and rapped gently on one corridor wall, thought for a few seconds and then tapped the other side. He spent another moment listening carefully, head cocked slightly to the side, and then hurriedly pulled the sonic disruptor out of his coat and held it against the wall. He turned the setting dial carefully and then pressed the screwdriver next to it, its bulb a carefully estimated distance from the barrel of the weapon. 

He braced himself, leant as far away from the wall as his awkward position would allow, and pulled the disruptor’s trigger. 

The Martian weapon let out a shriek and the Doctor winced. It only lasted for a second, and after it was over, he counted to three under his breath and then looked at the screwdriver’s readout. He checked it and checked it again, then sighed heavily and leant against the wall, running a hand over his eyes. 

He almost didn’t hear the footsteps on the stairs. 

“Doctor? Doctor is that you?” 

He straightened up as Queen Rossum clicked down the stairs and into the corridor. He stuffed the screwdriver and the disruptor back into his pockets and then turned around and gave an awkward, shallow Japanese bow. 

“What are you doing, Doctor?” 

“I’m looking for the catacombs, Your Majesty.” 

The queen sighed. “You may recall, Doctor, I told you there were no catacombs.”

“Yes, Your Majesty, you did. And I didn’t believe you.” 

“You think I lied?”

“Not so far. I think you were wrong.” 

“And how do you intend to find these catacombs, if they exist? Walk the entire castle, tapping on walls?” 

The Doctor smiled. “I thought about it, but there’s a quicker way.” He opened his coat. “This is a sonic disruptor. I borrowed it from the Martian ambassador. Don’t worry, it’s almost completely harmless. I did some tinkering, it just sends out a pulse of loud noise instead of a pulse of loud noise that kills people.” 

“Doctor…” the queen sighed. 

“How does loud noise help? Well, I’ll tell you. If I send a pulse into a wall like this one… exactly like this one… it’ll bounce off anything inside the wall that’s solid. And if there are any empty spaces in the walls it’ll… echo. My screwdriver can pick up the returning sound waves and show me a picture of what’s in the walls.”

“How can a screwdriver do this?”

“It’s a sonic screwdriver.” 

The queen sighed again. “Doctor, has it occurred to you that there may be other matters in this castle that require your attention?”

“No… why?”

“Look to your companion, Doctor.” 

“Amy? What’s happened to her?”

“Half an hour ago, Telamon, my son’s personal steward was found dead by his own hand. Found by… Lady Amelia.” 

“What?” 

“You could not be found, and we could not spare the staff to search for you.”

The Doctor took a step back, looking at the walls, the floor, anywhere but at the queen. “Amy…” he muttered. “Where’s Amy?”

“I imagine she is with my son,” the queen replied. “He may need you too. Hurry, Doctor.” 

She pointed down the corridor. The Doctor pivoted on his heel and ran. 

***

Amy sat in the far corner of the king’s study, trying to keep out of the way. She wished for solitude, but couldn’t bear the idea of being by herself. The part of her that was still little Amelia wished that the Doctor was there, as though he would somehow make it all better. 

The girl who had grown up to be the wounded Amy steeled herself, doing her best to shut out the image of Telamon hanging in front of her eyes and concentrated on the people in the room with her. It felt like the king had been speaking to person after person for an eternity, but it hadn’t even been an hour yet. She had listened to the quiet briefing on what to tell the press and Telamon’s family, the king’s insistence that the celebration would go ahead as planned, and finally the solemn report from the guards’ medical examiner that Telamon had definitely taken his own life. 

When all that was over, the captain of the guard bowed to the king and asked, “Do you require anything else, sire?” 

The king looked over at Amy. “I think I require ten minutes alone to speak to Lady Amelia.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” 

The room emptied. “Thanks,” Amy said when they were all gone. 

“Sometimes, being a king has advantages.” He gave her a weary smile. “For a few moments at least.” 

“So I’m not the only one who needs some time alone?”

“No. I apologise for using you as an excuse. Come with me.” 

She picked her way across the room and followed Harulan out through a door that was carefully concealed behind one of the wall fittings. It let them into a narrow passageway that soon forked. Harulan led her down the left-hand fork and they emerged from another concealed door into one of the main corridors. 

Harulan stopped in front of a pair of double doors. “Sometimes I come here when I need time alone to think.” 

“What’s here?”

“My… family.” 

He pulled the doors open in the way the Doctor did when he thought he’d landed the TARDIS somewhere really spectacular. Amy stepped past him into a long, curved room that stretched away in front of her and seemed to loop back on itself. She could barely see the walls themselves, they were covered with portrait after portrait: lines of Peladonain kings and queens gazed down at her, decked from head to toe in all their regal finery. She looked back, feeling very small and very young and wondered whether Harulan felt comforted or intimidated under the painted eyes of those whose legacy he bore. 

She followed Harulan down the line of pictures, watching as furs turned to silks to the fine synthetics of the present. The colours changed as house after house took the throne. Five portraits wore the same green as Harulan, the last of which Peladon’s current king had stopped in front of. He stood silently looking up at the man in the picture, almost as if he had asked a question and was waiting for a reply. 

Amy took a step closer and saw the name beneath the portrait. Harulan III. 

The king looked over at her and gave a small smile. “Lady Amelia of Inverness… may I present my father.” 

Amy stepped in front of the portrait. She had the ridiculous notion she should curtsey to it. But as she looked up at the man in green inside the golden frame, her breath caught and she just stood there, dumbly blinking to make sure she was really seeing what she thought she was seeing. 

“What is it, Amy?” 

Amy looked back at him, then at the portrait. Indecision tore at her. She tried to imagine telling him, and his reaction, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. So she took a leaf out of the Doctor’s book.

“It’s nothing. You… don’t look much like him.” 

Harulan shrugged. “I’m told I take after my maternal grandfather. If my mother has enough time to meet you, perhaps she will show you his picture and you can decide for yourself. For the moment, I think my ten minutes are up.” 

The gallery’s doors opened again, and Phineas came through. “Your Majesty, if you are ready, we should start the final preparations.” 

“Of course.” The king nodded. “Lady Amelia?”

“I’ll… can I stay here for just a bit? Your Majesty.” 

“Of course. If you need help finding the way out, one of the stewards will show you. I will see you at the ceremony.” 

He followed the chamberlain out. Amy stood awkwardly in the hall of former royalty until their footsteps had faded away. It did not take her that long to decide that she had to find the Doctor as soon as possible, no matter what he was doing.

That took less time than she thought. She almost collided with him in the doorway. 

“Amy!” 

The relief at seeing him was quickly overwhelmed by anger. “Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor replied. “Something I had to do. Something I thought… Are you okay?”

“No,” she muttered, surprising even herself. “No, I’m not. Something really bad is happening here, Doctor, and I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know if you do either. But there’s something you have to see.” 

“Amy… I’m sorry.” 

Amy looked away, leading him through the gallery. “I’ll be alright. We just have to stop this, whatever it is. You can do that, can’t you?” 

She heard him hesitate. “I can try.” 

“Good, because you need to know this. I’ve seen him. The man. The… ghost. He was in the room where… where I found Telamon. I didn’t tell anyone. And he’s here, Doctor.” 

The Doctor looked over his shoulder and twisted on the spot scanning the room. “Where?”

“Here,” she repeated and pointed at the portrait. “There. Doctor… it’s Harulan’s father. That’s who I’ve been seeing. Just like he is there.” 

The Doctor stared at her. He straightened up, jerking his head back and forth between her and the picture on the wall. 

“Doctor.” She forced him to focus. “I’ve never seen him before I came into this room ten minutes ago. How have I been seeing him since I got here?” 

“I… I don’t know. Him? You’re sure?”

“Yes!” 

He gave her one last, desperate look, as if pleading with her to change her mind, and then back up at the picture, hoping for it to change. Then he slumped, almost shrinking before her eyes, suddenly seeming so old that even the line of kings and queens watching them couldn’t measure his life. He sagged against the wall, reaching out to lean against it, palm slipping across the stonework before he steadied himself. 

“Doctor? What’s wrong?” 

The Doctor sighed heavily. “I thought…” Then he stopped, and she saw his hand grasp at the wall he was using for support. “I thought I’d made a mistake. Perhaps I have. But perhaps I haven’t.” 

He straightened up suddenly. The light was back in his eyes and he was smiling. 

“Stand back, Pond. And put your fingers in your ears.” 

Any did as he asked, but even through blocked ears she heard the shriek of the disruptor, which didn’t fully stop echoing inside her head until the Doctor snapped the screwdriver open to look at the results of whatever he had just done. 

“I’ve found it! Amy, I’ve found it!” 

“Found what?” 

The Doctor flipped the screwdriver around and followed the buzz along the room. Near the narrowest point, where the wall curved around again, there were several gaps between the portraits. He waved the screwdriver over each of them until the sound changed pitch and there was a faint click. The Doctor pushed gently against the wall and a section of it soundlessly opened inwards. 

“There you are,” he whispered. 

“Is that the secret entrance you’ve been looking for?” 

“Yes,” the Doctor answered. “Yes it is.” He spun around. “Amy, listen to me, this is important. Very important. I have to go down there. You cannot come with me. I need you to stay up here in case anything happens. Stay as close to the king as you can. Do you understand?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Good.” The Doctor pushed the door open. “Have fun, Pond.” 

He slipped through the gap into the darkness and snapped the entrance closed behind him. Amy stood there for a moment and then curiosity got the better of her and she walked up to the place the door had been and pushed it. Nothing happened. Even though she knew what she was looking for, she couldn’t even see the edges of the door. 

Amy stood for a moment, and then took a hand mirror out of her bag and carefully appraised her reflection. She looked good, but if she was going to be keeping watch on a king at a royal celebration, she thought she could do better than that. She snapped the mirror shut, pulled her dress a few centimetres clear of the floor and strode out of the gallery. 

***

The Doctor stood alone in the darkness of Peladon’s catacombs. This was the right place, he could feel it. The air tasted hot and stale, and there was just the hint of animal musk. 

The screwdriver did its best to illuminate the passageway as it curved away downwards, but he could still hardly see. However, the green light glinted off glass and he was able to locate an oil lamp in a niche in the wall less than a step from the door. An adjustment to the screwdriver and the lamp flared into life, bathing the darkness in a much more comforting yellow glow. 

The Doctor held the lamp out and cautiously set off downwards into the darkness. He had not gone more than a few steps before he sensed something behind him. He almost blew the flame out spinning around to confront the figure in the darkness.

“It’s only me,” said Rory. 

“That’s not helping,” the Doctor responded. “It can’t be you.” 

“Why not?”

The Doctor turned his back and kept going. “You’re dead.”

“You don’t have to remind me.” 

“But why am I seeing you? I thought Amy might be. I thought maybe everyone in the castle was. But they’re not. Amy’s seeing Harulan’s father, which means everyone else who’s seen a ghost is seeing him too. Except me. I can see you.” 

“Why did you think everyone was seeing me?”

The Doctor paused, and sighed. “Because that’s what I wanted to think. You weren’t really gone. I could do something about it. I could bring you back.” 

“You didn’t get me killed, Doctor. I saved you, remember?” 

“No, you didn’t.” 

“Yes I did. You would have been shot. You would have died.”

The Doctor pivoted on his heel, facing the spectre in the lamplight, finally looking Rory in the eye. “I would have regenerated!” He gestured futility with the lamp for a moment and then turned away. “I wouldn’t have liked it, I’ve just gotten used to this body, but I would have survived. But you didn’t know that… because I never told you. Or Amy.” 

“And even if I knew that, do you think I’d have just stood there on the off chance you had some alien trick up your sleeve? How would I have lived with myself if I’d done nothing?” 

That stopped the Doctor again. “Oh, Rory,” he murmured. 

He turned around again and pressed on. The tunnel wound around, leading him on a spiralling course down into the mountain. 

“Anyway,” Rory went on, “we were miles underground, trapped in a cavern that was filling with poisoned gas between homo reptilia and the crack from Amy’s bedroom wall. Without you we’d never have gotten out of there.” 

“And… what about Amy?” 

“What about her?” 

“Because I did all this for her. She’s Amy not Amelia because of something I did. And I brought you along because afterwards I wanted her to be happy. You made her happy.”

“So is that why you’ve been touring the universe trying to find her another eligible bachelor?” 

The Doctor faced him again. “That’s not fair.”

“Doctor, she had breakfast with him.”

“Yes? And? I was busy.” 

Rory looked back at him with a very familiar boyish uncertainty. “Amy’s only ever had… breakfast with me. I think. Does it still count as cheating if your fiancé never existed?”

“This wasn’t my idea,” the Doctor responded. “Not with Amy. And not with Jo either. If anything, she brought me here… Someone brought us here…”

He spun and turned his attention back to the passageway. It seemed to be levelling out now. 

“I wouldn’t blame you if you were,” Rory said suddenly. “Amy needs someone. She should be happy, not heartbroken.

The Doctor shook his head. “Her heart did break. She just doesn’t remember why.”

Ahead of him, the shadows shifted. He instinctively held a finger to his lips as something appeared in the darkness. A few steps further and he realised it was a gate. The bars were of heavy wrought iron, but the lock and chain that held it shut looked much newer and shone out from the rust. A buzz of the screwdriver and the lock opened, and the Doctor pushed the heavy gate open. The ancient hinges squealed in protest, and the sound echoed down the corridor.

And, from somewhere up ahead, something howled in reply. 

“Err… what was that?”

The Doctor smiled. “Aggedor.” 

Now, in the confines of the narrowing passageway, every footstep seemed deafening. He could hear Rory shuffling along behind him, but he paused regularly to listen to the shadows ahead of them. But he heard nothing, not even the whisper of a wind. From time to time the flickering lamp light caught in deep gouges in the walls and floor of the stone passageway that could only have been made by claws. 

Then, without warning, the tunnel widened. The Doctor came out into a roughly oval chamber where the passage branched: two options almost directly ahead of him and a third off to his right. All three choices looked identical, and from the junction there was nothing he could see down them to make one a more favourable option to the others. 

“Which way?” Rory asked.

The Doctor turned for a moment and used the screwdriver to scratch a crude mark on the passageway that led back to the castle. Then, as the buzz died away, he hesitated. Putting a finger to his lips, he closed his eyes and listened. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “He’s coming to us.” 

All he heard was a hiss of breath in the darkness and the royal beast of Peladon was suddenly there in the chamber with him. The long snout turned towards him, rows of razor teeth glinted in the lamp light and a single horn protruded from its forehead. But its fur was pure white, almost making it glow as it crossed the distance and sprang towards him. 

The Doctor leapt backwards and then blindly left as the creature’s claws reached out for him. He turned again, desperately trying to stabilise the fragile flame in the lamp and aimed the screwdriver at the great head. Green light blazed in the darkness as Aggedor turned towards him, but all the sonic illuminated were the milky white cataracts in the beast’s deep-set eyes. 

“Oh great!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Another blind monster!”

Aggedor struck at the sound of his voice, and the Doctor twisted out of the way, sliding sideways along the wall as the talons grated on stone. He pushed off as the animal turned and ducked past it again, trying as hard as he could not to breathe. 

“What’s your plan?” Rory shouted.

“Sing a Venusian lullaby!” The Doctor responded, dodging another strike.

“So sing!”

“I would, but it’s been a really long time and I’ve forgotten how it goes!” 

The next blow narrowly missed the Doctor’s arm. He had managed to get almost behind Aggedor, but was now cut off from any of his avenues of escape by the enormous white shadow taking up the centre of the chamber. He stood absolutely still as the monster lumbered around, searching for him. 

Then Rory started to sing.

“Blow the wind blow… swift and low… blow the wind o’er the ocean…”

The Doctor took a breath and joined in.

“Breakers rolling to the coastline… bringing ships to harbour… gulls against the morning sunlight… flying off to freedom…”

Aggedor hesitated, cocked his head and let out a low moan in return. 

The Doctor kept singing, repeating those same seven lines over again, listening as they rebounded against the stone. He wove them with their own echoes and with the gentle cries of Aggedor as the beast slowed its wild motions and retreated to the corner of the room. The Doctor followed, his voice ever more gentle and soothing with each repetition until it was hardly audible over the animal’s heavy, somnolent breathing. The claws retracted, the milky eyes slid closed, the great body relaxed, and Aggedor slept. 

The Doctor stood over him, his own tension slowly fading away, and smiled slightly. “Sir Walter Scott.” 

“Amy used to sing it sometimes,” Rory said. “She said she learned it when she was little.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor breathed. 

He settled down next to the animal, gently stroking the soft white fur. He noticed an interruption in the coat and ran his hands over a leather collar that had been fastened around the thick neck.

“Who’s put this on you?” he whispered, and then his fingers found a heavy box strapped to the collar beneath the chin. “Now this is interesting…”

Before he could continue his examination, Aggedor shifted. His limbs kicked and a low howl escaped from the parted jaws. The Doctor tensed, ready to spring away, but the royal beast slept on. 

“What’s wrong?” The Doctor whispered. “It’s okay. Show me what’s wrong.” 

He ran his hand over the creature’s face, settling it on the forehead at the base of the horn. Aggedor’s body was comfortingly warm, and the rhythm of his heavy breathing made the Doctor’s head drop. 

Around the Doctor, the world darkened, and the darkness expanded. Then there were shapes in it. The Doctor peered closer as the shapes solidified into other Aggedor. First dozens, then hundreds of them. Huge herds milling together and peacefully lowing on the mountainside beneath the black Peladonian sky. 

And walking calmly among them came all the men and women who had been kings and queens of Peladon. The Doctor watched them moving with the herd until they were almost part of it. He saw Peladon, Thalira and so many more he recognised only from glances up in the portrait gallery. Then last of all came Harulan III, and the Aggedor scattered before him as the vision began to shift and blur as the creatures lifted their faces to the sky and let out a howl that echoed off the cliffs and rang towards the distant mountains. 

The Doctor’s eyes snapped open. The howl was real, coming from the throat of the sleeping beast by his side. It reverberated around the chamber and he had no doubt what it meant. Then the sound faded, and all that was left was silence in the light of the flickering lamp.

“Rory?” he asked hesitantly. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps I’m not mad after all.”


	7. All My Sins Remembered

Amy would have been pacing, but her dress restricted any nervous movement beyond drumming her fingers against her dressing table in between adjusting the jewelled clips holding her complicated hairstyle in place for the fourth time. She forced herself to leave it at that, any more fiddling would just result in the whole arrangement unravelling. 

She had followed the Doctor’s instructions and kept as close to the king as she could, but that had just resulted in more time spent sitting in the corner of his study while he worked like she was a normal bored girl waiting for her boyfriend to finish his public health coursework. It had only lasted half an hour before they both parted to get ready for the celebration itself. She reassured herself that surrounded by stewards and guards, nothing was going to happen to him. She was less certain about the Doctor, and wished she knew where he was, whether he had found a monster in the secret tunnels or whether he had just gotten lost on a sight-seeing tour of the castle’s foundations. 

The mix of tension, boredom and frustration was starting to become unbearable again. Luckily, before she was able to take out her frustration on her hair or her dress, there was a knock at the door. 

“Yeah? Who is it?” 

“Phineas, Lady Amelia.” 

“Hi. How are you?”

“I am well, Lady Amelia. Is the Doctor with you?”

Amy opened the door. “Um… no. He’s gone for a walk again. I don’t know when he’ll be back.” 

“His Majesty has sent me to escort you to the Great Hall,” Phineas told her, looking past her as though he didn’t really believe her. 

“That’s sweet. Is it time then?”

“It is time, Lady Amelia.” 

He walked slowly so she could keep up with him. “When will the Doctor be joining us?”

“Oh, he’ll be along.” Amy waved her hand vaguely. “Unless he’s late.”

“Is he likely to be late?”

“It’s… happened. Does it matter?”

“Lady Amelia… an empty seat at the High Table would not look good for His Majesty. However… the Doctor’s position is High Physician in absentia. And… his will not be the only empty seat today.” 

“I’m sorry,” Amy said, feeling as though she’d had to say that far too many times today. “You must have known the Apothecary and Telamon pretty well.”

Phineas nodded. “Yes, Lady Amelia. The Household Staff has always been close. A lucky few are close to His Majesty as well. I believe he will be as good a ruler as his father, and as good a man.” 

“Did you know his father too?” Amy asked. 

“I am the Royal Chamberlain,” Phineas replied. “I oversee the running of the king’s Household and his home. I knew him very well. But I was not his friend.” 

“I don’t see how you could know all that and not be his friend.” 

“Friendship requires trust, Lady Amelia. You should know that.”

She hesitated, lagging behind him, then asked cautiously, “Are you okay?”

He turned to her and sighed. “Forgive me, Lady Amelia. I have been under a great strain of late. I spoke out of turn.” 

Amy gave him a bright smile. “Nothing to worry about. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Phineas nodded and did not speak for the rest of the walk to the Great Hall. It was only half full, this time; many of the guests were clearly still getting ready. Amy paused and looked around, looking for anyone familiar or anyone suspicious. All that was notable was that the absence of guests made the presence of the green-jacketed guards even more obvious, but she told herself there was nothing unusual in that. 

Phineas led her to her place on the High Table and pulled out her chair for her. He gave an uncertain look at the chair were the Doctor would sit if he ever arrived and then walked away. Amy sat, still watching the hall with no idea what she was looking for. The minutes past as it slowly filled with guests, all of them awaiting the coming of the king. 

***

The Doctor charged out of the catacombs and into the portrait gallery. He didn’t even bother to pull the passageway door closed behind him as he hurried out of the darkness and into the dull orange light, making straight for the double doors. 

And then, half way there, he skidded to a stop and swung around.

“I missed something… what did I miss?” 

He rushed over to the wall and fumbled with the switch for the lights. With a hiss, the light in the room went from orange to yellow to white until the knob clicked against its stopper. 

The Doctor ran back over to the pictures and followed them until he reached the quintet of green-clad rulers that were Harulan’s immediate predecessors. He stood ten paces from the wall, eyes dancing over all of the men and women in the portraits. Then he crossed the distance and pressed himself as close as he could to the wall while still looking up at the life-sized images, hands gripping the wall as if he wanted to climb into the pictures and demand answers from their occupants. He only spent a few seconds on each of the five, finishing with Harulan III, who he stared at with such intensity that it seemed like the painted king might blink and look away. 

Then he walked slowly away towards the passageway entrance. The screwdriver buzzed over the opening mechanism for a second and as the Doctor flicked his wrist to look at the result, he gave a weary smile. 

“Yes… of course…”

Then, from far away, echoing through the stonework of the castle, he heard the Peladonian anthem begin. His smile vanished. He looked at his watch.

“Oh no…”

***

Amy tried to stay sitting up straight in her chair, just in case someone was watching. The Hall was almost uncomfortably bright, lit electrically for the benefit of the cameras. The tables were almost full now. Everyone not involved in the procession was in the hall and finding their seats or positions. The only ones still moving about were the camera crews, who stood out from the multi-coloured throng in their incredibly plain dark suits. 

Currently, they were all grouped together, huddled in some sort of technical discussion. She watched them, trying to make out what they were saying over the bustle in the hall. Then, as she turned her head, she thought she saw a flicker of green in the corner of her eye. Her head jerked back, but there was nothing there, just one of the cameras. But she was alert now, bolt upright, scanning the hall carefully, trying to pick out details rather than just the crowd. If there was one thing that her life with the Doctor had taught her, it was to beware unexplained things in the corner of her eye. 

But keeping her eye on everything that was going on in the hall at once was impossible and she had to keep her head still to avoid drawing attention. She quickly ran out of things to look at as the last of the guests sat down and it was just the camera crews finishing their setup. Amy watched one of them at random hurrying across the hall in front of her, but her attention was flagging, so when he passed in front of a figure in dark green, it took her a moment to realise and look back. There was no one there. 

Amy gently nudged the woman sitting next to her and pointed at the empty space in the centre of the hall. “Did you see that?”

“See what, Lady Amelia?”

Before Amy could explain, the last of the camera crews gave a signal and Phineas came forward. “My lords, ladies and gentlemen. Good evening. In light of the… events of this afternoon, we have decided that the celebration will no longer be transmitted live. Never the less, please do not do anything that will increase the amount of editing more than necessary.” 

That made Amy smile and got a few laughs from around the room. Phineas smiled back in appreciation and turned towards the door. He was half way to the door when he passed in front of something that, for a second, made him flicker like Amy was viewing him through a heat haze. But it only lasted an instant and no one else seemed to see it.

“Doctor,” she murmured, “where are you?”

One of the stewards gave a signal, silence fell in the Great Hall and the TV cameras – controlled remotely by the crew who were now safely out of sight – came to life. The great hall doors swung open and the Peladonian Anthem began. 

As the first notes crashed through the hall, Amy glanced back at the spot she had seen the shimmer. For just a second, there was a green shadow standing in the centre of the hall. She wanted to call out but had no idea what to say. 

The procession flowed into the hall, led by Phineas. One slow, regal step at a time, he led it through the doors, past the lower tables and towards the point where it would separate. But then Amy saw him stare ahead, his eyes wide at the point between the cameras and in front of the lectern. He almost flinched, almost hesitated, only supreme self-control kept him moving forward. 

Amy could see what frightened him. It wasn’t a shadow anymore, no longer featureless. She could see the different shades of green and the textures of the clothes. She could see the limbs and the shoes and gloves on their ends. She could see the features of the face that surveyed the room. 

And she realised that it wasn’t just her. It wasn’t just Phineas. Everyone else could see him too. 

Gasps of horror, whispered exclamations, hissed demands filled the room beneath the unrelenting roar of the music no one thought to stop. 

In the centre of the room, the spectre of Harulan III slowly and silently raised an arm and pointed a long finger imperiously at Phineas.

And the lights went out. 

***

The Doctor ran through the castle corridors towards the music. He held the screwdriver out in front of him, waving it back and forth with the tip pointing at the ceiling. The light at the tip was pulsing green, and as he ran the pulses were getting brighter and brighter and closer and closer together. 

He was getting close now, feeling the anthem through his feet, taking the route he’d been escorted down earlier in the day, looking for one particular door. He reached the right corridor and hurried down it, pirouetting so he could scan the doors on either side of the corridor scanning the doors on either side of him. The third door on the right bore the sign he was looking for: Power Maintenance. 

The door wasn’t locked. He pulled it open and sprang inside. The room was empty. The Doctor scratched his head uncertainly, looked at the sign on the door, and then back at the room. 

“That’s… odd…”

He looked at his shoes, and then noticed he was standing on a hatch. Then he noticed there were four more hatches in the room’s floor, three around the edges and one in the centre. Crouching down by the nearest, the Doctor pulled it open to find a web of interconnecting conduits meeting in a junction box. He opened the others to find the same pattern, but with different arrangements of conduits and boxes. 

He stood in between them and twirled slowly on the spot. “Eenie… menie… minie…” 

Then he noticed that the light on the screwdriver had stopped pulsing. It was now blazing bright green.

“Never mind.”

He jumped over the hatches, landed in the doorway and spun back to face the room. His eyes scanned the far wall as he unclipped the sonic disruptor from his waist. 

“Sorry,” he said, in case anyone was listening.

Then he fired the disruptor at the wall. 

The weapon’s scream filled the room, making him wince even as he adjusted the controls to increase the power. The room groaned as the soundwaves trapped inside it crashed into the walls and reverberated with no means of escape except to transfer their energy beyond the stonework and into the fragile crystal and plastic central heating system beyond it. 

Five seconds seemed to last for an eternity and the Doctor wondered if he’d ever hear anything but the artificial scream again, when the walls gave a cry audible above the shriek of the disruptor and the stonework split outwards. A torrent of water burst through the fracture, spraying across the room and crashing down into the open safety hatches. 

For a moment, the Doctor’s smile was illuminated by the brilliant flash of a thousand sparks, and then all the lights went out. 

***

The music stopped as the lights went out. In the deafening silence that followed, Amy blinked quickly, trying to get a sense of what was happening in the darkness in front of her. Around here there were crashes as chairs fell backwards, thumps and cries as people collided in the dark, and then the babble of desperate voices that slowly grew deafening as everyone tried to shout over each other.

It was only a few seconds before the first torch flashed on from somewhere near the main doors, then another, this one from the galleries. The beams played wildly across the hall, creating the impression of a frieze that jerked and shifted between blinks. It was not until the third torch came on and focussed on the procession that Amy realised that the image of the old king had vanished. And so had Phineas.

Looking wildly from one side to the other, the growing light allowed her to see that one of the smaller doors was swinging closed. Without thinking, she sprang to her feet, pulling at her dress to keep from tripping, and pushed her way through the growing panic towards the door. She had to shove several nobles out of the way to reach it, and just as she did, she heard the voice of the major-domo boom out, calling for calm. But then she was through the door and back into the dim, gas-lit corridors. 

As the noise behind her faded and died, she could hear footsteps hammering away down the passage. She kicked off her high heels and ran after them. 

The corridor wound but didn’t fork, and she ignored its branches. She thought she was gaining on the source of the sound, but then there was the noise of a slamming door and the footsteps stopped. She kept running, bare feet slipping on smooth stone, until she came to another set of embossed doors, and, hardly slowing, pushed through them into a room she’d never seen before. 

It shone. All the furniture seemed to be made of polished metal that glowed brilliantly in the blaze of the candles used to light it. The carpets and hangings were the finest blend of a thousand colours that came together in patterns which danced across the walls and floors. The sight brought her to a stop, even before she saw the raised platform bearing a throne made of heavy, dark wood and inlayed with coils of silver. 

Phineas was on his knees in front of the throne. Amy blinked, and suddenly she could see the figure of the old king standing above him.

“How?” the old man whispered. “How is this possible?”

The ghost said nothing. It took a step closer to the Chamberlain and reached out to him. Phineas recoiled and scrambled across the carpet. 

“You cannot be here, sire! You cannot! You died! This is impossible!”

Amy stood, frozen to the spot, unable to move, looking back and forth between the spectre and the man on the floor.

“Did they see you?” Phineas scrambled to his feet. “Did Telamon and the Apothecary see you too? Is that why? Then you must know I did nothing. I kept their secret. I made sure it was kept. I had no choice.” 

“What secret?”

Amy turned. She hadn’t seen Harulan come in, but he was standing beside one of the tapestries. There was a secret door behind it, she realised. 

“What secret?” the king repeated.

“Sire?” Phineas tore his eyes from the ghost, and Amy saw tears in them. “Your Majesty? No… no, I cannot…”

“Harulan…” Amy began.

He gave her a surprised look, as though he hadn’t noticed her before. “Amy… Lady Amelia, you should not be here.” 

“Why?”

Harulan ignored her, striding over to the Chamberlain. “What secret, Phineas? What secret did you keep? Tell me. Tell him.” 

Amy glanced back and forth between the king and the ghost of his father. “Wait, you can see him?”

“What secret, Phineas?” Harulan demanded again.

“No…” the old man whimpered. “Your Majesty… no.” 

“Confess!” 

“That’s enough, Your Majesty.” 

Amy felt her heart leap into her throat. The words were quiet, but they got the attention of everyone in the room. The only head that didn’t turn was the spectre’s. 

The Doctor strode through the throne room. Even he could see the ghost now, standing beside Phineas and the king. They, like Amy, were frozen to the spot, waiting to see what he would do. 

“Your Majesty,” he said. “I’m sorry.” 

“Sorry?” Amy repeated. “Sorry for what?”

The Doctor gave her a reassuring smile and then turned back to the king. “I failed in my duty as your High Physician. If I’d realised what I was looking at earlier, two men might still be alive. I know you didn’t mean for them to die.” 

“Doctor, what are you talking about?” Amy demanded.

“There is no ghost, Pond,” the Doctor replied. “It’s just a projection. The effects of a psychic technology based on something borrowed from the Sensorites. It reaches into the target’s mind and finds a source of guilt and sorrow, and makes them see it in front of them.” 

“Why?”

Harulan took a deep breath. “To make the men responsible for my father’s death tell me the truth. Amy… he wasn’t alone on the battlements when he died. The Apothecary was there, and so was Telamon. And Phineas helped them cover it up.” 

Amy stepped back, anger twisting inside her. “So you killed them? Because you thought they killed your father?”

“No, Amy,” Harulan shook his head desperately. “I never meant for them to die. I wanted the truth, not revenge. Wouldn’t you want the truth about your parents?”

Amy stared back at him and blinked away the beginnings of tears. “No,” she told him. “Not like that.”

“Your Majesty,” the Doctor said. “You wanted the truth. Here it is. I don’t think your father fell.”

“There, Amy, you see?”

“No.” The Doctor shook his head, sadly. “He didn’t fall. I think… he jumped.”

Amy shot a look of confusion at him. The king’s mouth dropped open, but he couldn’t speak. Phineas let out a long, desperate sob and slumped to the ground. 

“No,” Harulan hissed. “No. You are lying. My father would not take his own life.”

The Doctor sighed again. “It’s called Parmar’s Disease. It’s a rare genetic condition that causes mental instability in middle age. Paranoia, depression and sometimes suicidal thoughts. It’s got a unique set of outward signs: long, narrow fingers; a slight stoop; premature grey hairs. And… very pale blue eyes.”

Amy looked into Harulan’s pale eyes, and then up at those of the silent image of his father. “How did you know?” she whispered.

“From the portraits,” the Doctor said. “The symptoms were clear enough. And the dates. They all died young. Now, Your Majesty, please, turn the device off before anyone else gets hurt.”

“No!” Harulan shouted. “No! You are lying, Doctor! My father was murdered and at the touch of a control I can make him appear to all the citizens of Peladon, and together we shall seek for justice!” 

“A psychic attack on that scale would cause chaos,” the Doctor told him. “You’ll put thousands of lives in danger.”

“Harulan,” Amy said. “Please… stop.”

“Amy…” Harulan could not meet her eyes. “I could have once. But that time as passed.”

“Oh god,” Amy whispered. 

Harulan pulled away from them, hurrying up the steps to the throne. He paused beside one of the armrests and reached down to flip open a hidden panel. The Doctor drew the screwdriver and aimed it at the chair. 

Then the door slammed open and Queen Rossum hurried through it. 

“Doctor, stop! My son, please, listen to them!” 

“Mother?”

The queen hurried across the throne room, all but ignoring the group standing at the bottom of the steps, and stood in front of her son. She gave him a sad smile, glanced down at the floor, and then took his hand, moving it away from the panel. 

“It is true,” she said. “The disease was the great secret of your family. They thought if the Parliament found out about it, they would use it as an excuse to dissolve the monarchy entirely.”

“Doctor,” Amy hissed, “that’s…”

The Doctor raised a hand to quiet her. “I know.” 

“You were right,” the queen went on. “Your father was not alone on… on the night he died. His oldest friend, and his most loyal servant were with him. And so was I. We tried to make him come down. We did all we could. And… we failed.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Harulan asked.

“I couldn’t,” Rossum dropped her head. “How could I tell my son that his father gave up the rule of his planet and the love of his family because he was weaker than a simple disease that turned his own hand against him? It hurt too much. It still does. You received treatment as a baby, you would never have suffered as he suffered. I thought you would never have to know.” 

“But…” Harulan looked down at the image of his father, who watched them both silently. “But you held this secret, why did you not see my father’s ghost too?”

The queen gave a sad smile, and for the first time looked down at the spectre. “He was my husband. I loved him with all my heart. I love him still. I saw him, Harulan. I have seen him every day for ten years. In empty rooms; behind my eyes; at my side before I wake… in the face of my son.”

Amy, standing at the foot of the steps, watched her, silent tears pouring down her face. 

“He will be at my side as long as I live,” Rossum went on. “As I would have been at his. Now please, my son, Your Majesty, end this. Switch off the machine.” 

She retreated down the steps. Harulan sagged into the throne. Slowly, he raised his hand and began to motion over the hidden controls.

As he did so, the Doctor watched as Rossum took her place beside the shade of the man she had married all those years ago. Then he looked at Amy, and for just a moment, Rory was standing beside her. The Doctor’s eyes met his one last time as Rory reached out towards Amy as though to caress her cheek or catch her tears. And then he was gone. 

The queen sighed and looked at the empty space beside her. “It is over, Doctor.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “It is. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

“Perhaps you did enough,” the queen replied. “Once again, Peladon thanks you.”

She walked up the steps and stood beside her son, reaching down to squeeze his hand. He looked up at her, and then down at Amy.

“Goodbye, Lady Amelia,” he said. 

Amy tried to look him in the eye and found she couldn’t. “Goodbye,” she said. 

She turned away and walked slowly towards the door. The Doctor started to follow her, but the king called after him.

“Doctor! Doctor, please. I never meant to do so much harm. Can you forgive me?”

The Doctor paused, cast a long glance at Amy’s retreating back, and sighed. “It doesn’t matter. Forgiveness isn’t mine to give. Or to ask for.”

He followed Amy through the door. In the corridors beyond, it felt as though the castle was coming back to life. Normality was resuming. 

“Doctor,” Amy said, uncertainly. “That machine, projector, thing. Why did it make me see the king too?”

“Because you’re more sensitive to this sort of thing than most people. You caught the echoes of the effect, and so did everyone else in the castle who saw the ghost. But it didn’t work on the aliens. Kashak and Alpha Centauri didn’t see anything at all.”

“But what about you? You’re alien… sort of. And it made you see something, didn’t it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Who did you see?”

The Doctor sighed and gave her a smile that was both sad and hopeful. “Someone I used to know.”


	8. To Thine Own Self Be True

Castle Peladon shivered with the last echoes of the day’s trauma; the inhabitants were led back to their rooms, announcements were made and the jubilee was postponed for at least a week due to technical problems. In between all this, the Doctor led Amy and her recovered shoes back towards the TARDIS, stopping only to return Kashak’s disruptor and flashing the psychic paper at anyone else who got in his way.

Outside, it was still. The wind had died and the sky was silent. Under a clear and starry night, the mountain was peaceful.

It was only once they were safely out of the castle, and the sounds and bustle of the celebrations were fading into the darkness, that either of them stopped. Amy slumped onto a nearby comfortable-looking rock, kicked off her heels again and flexed her feet.

“I’m going to be so glad to get my trainers back on,” she proclaimed. “And stop dragging along the ground everywhere.”

“I’ll try to remember that in future,” the Doctor said.

Amy went back to examining her feet, her shoes and the crumpled hem of her dress. “So…” she muttered eventually.

He sat down next to her. “So?”

She let a breath out and gave him a look of boldness masking uncertainty. “So, if the queen was the one who rang to make sure you’d come, why all the secrecy? Why didn’t she tell you she was suspicious?”

“Because she knew about me,” the Doctor replied, talking to the rocks rather than Amy. “She knew the stories. All the stories. And she didn’t know whether she was getting the High Physician or…”

“Or the… Oncoming Storm?”

“Exactly.” The Doctor sprang to his feet. “Come along, Pond. We’re almost there.”

Amy nodded and followed him. Another few minutes brought them back into the comforting warm orange glow of the TARDIS. The Doctor wandered around the console, fiddling with the controls, while Amy leaned against the rail.

“Did you ever find that Aggedor thing?”

“Oh yes. We had a nice chat. Talked about old times. But if I hadn’t found him I never would have realised… someone had put a psychic projector around his neck. Someone wanted a ghostly Aggedor roaming the corridors before he had a better idea. But if it hadn’t been for that projector and the psychic lock on the passageway door, I never would have realised what was going on.”

“Only because you were looking in completely the wrong direction from the start!”

The Doctor didn’t reply. Silence fell between them as he looked at the console and she looked at her shoes. Eventually, he broke it.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Amy smiled brightly. “Of course. I’ll be fine. We saved the day, didn’t we?”

The Doctor smiled back. A smile that said he understood and was there to listen, but wasn’t going to ask and he wasn’t going to mention the tear streaks that were still clear on her face. His hypocrisy only extended so far.

Amy returned the smile, more genuine this time, and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Honestly, Doctor; a mad alien, a mad painter and now a mad king. I sure know how to pick them don’t I? Maybe one day I’ll meet a nice, normal guy.”

She turned her back before she saw the Doctor’s smile fade. She pulled off her heels one last time and strolled out of the console room towards the wardrobe.

The Doctor waited until the sound of her footsteps had faded away and then sighed. He stopped and stood in silence for a moment. And then he bent down and pulled open a storage hatch beneath the console. Inside, there was a jagged object wrapped in a handkerchief that the Doctor didn’t touch and tried not to even look at, and a small, red box that he fished out.

He flipped the box open and looked inside. Amy’s engagement ring glittered in the console room lights.

“When,” he whispered, “shall we three meet again?”

The empty room didn’t answer. The Doctor looked deep into the diamond, into the patterns of light dancing inside it. Rory Williams had never been, but the ring was still there, beautiful and impossible and real.

“In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

He snapped the box shut and dropped it into his pocket. And when he looked up, he saw something reflected in the glass of the time rotor. A figure in bronze and scarlet.

He spun, and there was no one there. The room was empty. He was alone.

The Doctor started to smile. He turned back to the controls, twisting, pulling and spinning with a renewed purpose, letting his voice drift through the ship as he answered his own question.

“When the hurley-burley’s done. When the battle’s lost and won. And at the setting of the sun!”

**The End**


End file.
